Bloggo Sehr Schnell und Wild

Sehr Schnell und Wild -- a marking for the first movement of Paul Hindemith's Kammermusik No 1 Op 24, one of the four pieces I heard yesterday in the Gunter Theatre at the Peace Center. The music was certainly "very fast and wild." I'll try for this post NOT to be.

What can I say? I am now more sold on Greenville than ever. My second visit with the Greenville Symphony Orchestra (GSO) proved at least as enjoyable as the first, one weekend ago (see Bloggo Allegretto ma non Troppo). While last weekend's treat featured between two and five members of the orchestra for each piece played in a theatre (Centre Stage) that seats 285, yesterday's concert was performed by a chamber orchestra of between 30 and 40 members in the elegant and acoustically fine Gunter Theatre at the Peace Center, which seats 400. In two weeks I'll see the full symphony in concert at the main hall of the Center, much larger than either Centre Stage or the Gunter -- 2100 seats. 

In other words, I'm being introduced to the symphony in one sense from less to more, and while Mies van der Rohe famously noted that "less is more" I'm beginning to think that while he might be right in terms of architecture, "more" can pretty darned fine as well.

Yesterday's concert was called Oktoberfest. Oktober in that it takes place in October, Oktoberfest in that it is a bow to that great German celebration of beer and brotherhood, and Oktoberfest too in that Oktoberfest beer (courtesy of the local brewery Thomas Creek) was served gratis after the concert.

Before I get to the actual music, I want to tell you about the music director of the GSO, Maestro Edvard Tchivzhel, a dapper old Russian, native of St Petersburg, who began his career in that city, at that time known as Leningrad for you know who, in the mid-1970s, just out of the music academy. 

Maestro Edvard Tchivzhel

In the 1980s he became known in several western European countries as well, including Sweden where in 1986 he became the chief conductor of the Umea Sinfonietta. In 1991 Tchivzhel was enthusiastically received in a U.S. tour, and afterwards defected to the U.S., aided by certain citizens of Greenville, SC, a place he considers, to quote the program notes, his “American cradle.” After conducting at orchestras throughout the U.S. and Central America, in 1999 he was made Music Director of the GSO, where he has, happily, remained. I say happily because the citizens of Greenville are lucky to have him, and also because he made ME very happy with his witty (if heavily accented) introductions of each of the pieces in the program. These friendly, informative chats lessen the stiff formality sometimes associated with concerts of important music, is as I noted funny in places, and probably most importantly, without hitting the audiences over the head, it is instructive.

After his first introduction I was already delighted with Maestro Tchivzhel, but I hadn’t heard the orchestra, so imagine my thrill when the orchestra embarked skillfully and assuredly on selections from Handel’s Water Music, a favorite of mine. Immediately upon ending the music and before the audience could begin to applaud the Maestro turned his head back to the audience with a smile and said something like, “That’s the end! Not ALL of the Water Music, but enough for now. The whole piece lasts more than an hour, and we have other music to get to!”

Then came laughter, from myself among others, followed by applause. Before I go on to the next composers, I want to remind you a little about Georg Frideric - aka George Frederick - Handel (1685-1759). He probably needs no introduction, as all readers of my blog are highly intellectual and super educated, but I’ll introduce him anyway, as it is Dottore Gianni’s wont to do so.

Handel was of course from Germany – as were the other two composers chosen for Oktoberfest – another reason for the concert’s title. Born interestingly in the same year that J.S. Bach and Domenico Scarlatti were born, Handel was something of a prodigy, and at age 21 went to Italy to study. 

Handel

But he spent much of his life in London, England, where he introduced a vogue for Italian opera and wrote many during his stay, and where he wrote several oratorios as well, among them the piece probably most associated with him, The Messiah. He was named Kapellmeister to King George I. Now if you know your history of England you’ll be well aware that George I was the first in the line of Hanoverian kings of England, who just happened to be German. Among Handel’s obligations to George I, was to write pieces of music for special occasions. One such was demanded for the summer of 1717. It was performed on a barge in the River Thames, heard by George and his party who were ensconced on the royal barge listening to it – thus Water Music. King George enjoyed it so much that he demanded three performances – twice before dinner and once after – that’s a LOT of water music, as the full piece is over an hour in length, but there’s a lot of water in the Thames, and of course whether or not all the guests liked it as much as George, it had to be – it’s very good to be the king!

The first half of the concert also included a piece for piano and orchestra by Richard Strauss (1864-1949),

Richard Struass
painted by Max Liebermann

no relation to the watz king (thank god), instead the great late-Romantic composer from Munich (one of Dottore Gianni’s very favorite cities – AFTER those of Italy, obviously, as the good doctor loves nothing more than bella Italia!). Like Handel, Strauss wrote several operas, most famously Der Rosenkavalier, but the pieces for which he is best known called tone poems – Also Sprach Zarathustra is the most familiar of these thanks to Stanley Kubrick and his film 2001: A Space Odyssey, or as Maestro Tchivzhel slightly mis-named it in his entertaining comments: “Odyssey 2000.”

Side-bar: what the hell is a tone poem anyway? Dottore Gianni has heard the term but until today no one has ever bothered to define it for him. So! He went to the wise and wiki pedia and found this answer: It is “a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section (movement) in which the content of a poem, or story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another non-musical source is illustrated or evoked.”

Okay, but what the hell is a tone poem? The good doctor is joking of course – that’s actually a good, succinct definition.

The piece we were treated to at the concert is called Burleske in D minor, Op. 11, a dazzling and difficult piece for piano accompanied by a chamber orchestra, written when the composer was only 21. He was working in Meiningen, a very artsy place, as assistant conductor to Hans von Bulow, one of the greatest German conductors of the era. The story goes that Von Bulow was to play the piece for its premiere while Strauss conducted it, but Von Bulow looked at the score and proclaimed it unplayable. Now of course it IS playable, with difficulty, but the reason it was unplayable for Von Bulow is that he had only one musical misfortune – tiny hands. Alas, the premiere was delayed as a result of old “tiny-fingers” Von Bulow, but was a great success five years later when Strauss found a pianist with hands and talent large enough to handle the task.

The pianist engaged for the task at our concert is also German, David Gross. He also happens to be on the music faculty of Furman University, and lucky are his students because he has the longest fingers in the world – no, no of course he doesn’t (though who really knows?), but he IS gifted. He easily handled the the showy piece with ease and verve, and received a standing ovation (which Dottore Gianni thought a tad much, but joined in as he could have seen nothing but the large buttocks of lazy Americans had he not risen).

The second half of the concert included two pieces, another by Strauss, which ended the program, but first Kammermusik Op. 24  No. 1 by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963). 

Paul Hindemith

Hindemith has never been a favorite of mine, in fact most twentieth century composers have never been favorites of Dottore Gianni, but you may remember my last post, in which I noted that while I see no reason to own a CD, or even to download an MP3, of most twentieth century composers, I can easily appreciate the pieces they write when I see them well performed in a live concert. This proved true for Kammermusik (which simply means “chamber music”) No. 1., not just because it was very well performed, but because of Tchivzhel’s amusing and informative comments about it.

Hindemith, along with Stravinsky and others, wrote in what’s been identified as the neoclassical musical style of the early twentieth century. Such music is characterized by dissonance and often boisterous musical surprises, and also by the incorporation of jazz, and music associated with cabaret and circus. Instruments not usually associated with the classical repertoire (including in this case accordion, vibraphone and unusual percussion instruments, as well as a siren!) are employed to achieve interesting and frequently humorous effects.

The piece lasts only 15 minutes – Tchivzhel kept reassuring the audience in his remarks that if nothing else it was short – and is in four movements, the markings of which have little to do with classical style:

I.            Sehr schnell und wild (very fast and wild)

II.         Mässig schnell halbe (massively fast half-notes)

III.     Quartet

IV.      Finale 1921

From the description of the piece and from hearing about its premiere, in which a near riot broke out I thought I’d really hate it:

“Whistles blew, boos resounded, chairs flew through the air, a hellish noise filled the room. Hindemith, in the meantime, had disappeared backstage with the other musicians. As the spectacle reached its height, he reappeared – thoroughly calm – seated himself at the percussion, beat with all his might on the drums and let the slide whistle [the siren] howl. The honest Münchener [citizens of Munich] were so taken aback by this unexpected behavior that Hindemith was the victor in an uneven battle.” (from the program notes)

But hearing about all the fuss actually prepared the audience for much more than they received in the way of shock. Tchivzhel said to the people gathered something to this effect: “I am not concerned about chairs flying through the air, as the chairs in the Gunter Theatre are VERY well secured, but please, no tomato throwing.”) and a piece filled with humor and frequent beautiful passages as well as some cacophony (which was part of the humor) was what the audience got. And the Maestro capped the piece by turning quickly to the audience and ducking! This man knows how to sell a piece of music that might be perceived as difficult.

Hindemith had to “duck” as well in his life, but in his case as in so many others he was “ducking” Hitler. In the 1930s he got out of Germany, and in 1940 arrived in the U.S. where he continued a distinguished composing career and combined it with teaching, as Professor of Music at Yale, among other places.

The Nazi reference allows us a neat return to Richard Strauss, whose suite from Der Bürger als Edelmann, better known as Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme from the play by the great seventeenth century writer Moliere, 

Moliere

capped the program. Whereas Hindemith, a bad-boy of music at the time, whose work was called “degenerate” as was  music by other modern composers, and paintings by many visual artists – Goebbels denounced Hindemith as an “atonal noise-maker” – high-tailed it from Germany and rightly so, Strauss, a well-respected senior statesman of German music, remained.

Strauss’s sympathies were not with Hitler, but early in the Nazi era the composer had hopes that the regime might promote German music and art. His daughter-in-law was Jewish and by staying in the country Strauss was able to protect her and her children throughout the war. According to Wikipedia, in his private journal Strauss scorned Goebbels, calling him a pipsqueak (!), and wrote: “I consider [his] Jew-baiting as a disgrace to German honour, as evidence of incompetence — the basest weapon of untalented, lazy mediocrity against a higher intelligence and greater talent.” And about Strauss Goebbels wrote in his diary: “Unfortunately we still need him, but one day we shall have our own music and then we shall have no further need of this decadent neurotic.”

In the turbulent atmosphere of those times no matter how highly Strauss was valued, such was the power of a Goebbels that the composer was lucky not only in that he was able to save his family, but that he himself was allowed to live.

But the music we heard on Sunday was composed before the Nazi rise to power, having premiered in Salzburg in 1920, so enough speculation on the fate of artists living in a tyrannical regime, Dottore Gianni, to the music, bitte!

The introduction to this piece saw Maestro Tchivzhel at his most instructive, telling the basic plot of Moliere’s play, 

The Bourgeois
Gentleman

in which a wealthy but boorish fellow wishes to be made into a gentleman, and of course despite all his striving and handing around of money to those who would make him so, cannot succeed. And the Maestro was also at his most demonstrative, literally, in that as he described the different events musically depicted by Strauss, he stopped and had the orchestra play themes that he spoke of, including the frequent entrances of the bürger, gentilhomme, gentleman, (call him what you like he was none of these), marked by ponderous music from the the brass and winds; a drunken guest at the dinner treated in the last movement, a piccolo shrilly playing “La Donna e Mobile” from Verdi’s opera, and so on. In fact after he described and had the orchestra demonstrate from the first four movements:

I.             Overture

II.          Minuet

III.       The Fencing Master

IV.       The Entrance and Dance of the Tailors

(you may perceive from these titles that a dancing master arrives to teach him that skill, a fencing master to teach him swordplay, and tailors to attempt to dress him in the fashion of the day)

he announced to the audience that he would stop before the final movement:

V.          The dinner

to further demonstrate what was going on at this event – and he did! If it may seem in the reading of this post to have taken place in a classroom rather than a concert hall, it if so it was a most pleasurable classroom indeed, and of course the music was divine! I for one am very happy to know more about the music than less. Too often audiences sit in blissful ignorance of what the music is doing, treasuring the music itself but not understanding the subjects it addresses.

The playing of the piece was delightful and skilled, as I’d already come to expect from the fine ensemble of musicians. Strauss knew how to get the best use of an orchestra and the GSO under one of my now very favorite conductors, Maestro Edvard Tchivchel, seemed to know how to best perform the beautiful music of Strauss. One last note on the Maestro. To end the third section, on the fencing master, it seemed to be at least that his last stroke of a baton looked extremely like the thrust of a sword. I kid you not!

By the way, for those of you who read my last post, my new girlfriend-from-afar, the violist, was present – first (and endowed) chair in that section of the orchestra, so my happiness, musical and amorous, was complete!

And so now, is Bloggo Sehr Schnell und Wild!