Maurice Ravel, Leopold Stokowski, Franz Liszt, and a handful of others were accomplished musicians who knew what they were doing.  Too often, however, transcriptions are made by instrumentalists or ensembles looking to perform music that wasn’t written for their respective instruments or combinations thereof.  Thus, you often find clarinet sonatas by Brahms performed by flutists, or any piece by anybody performed by brass quartets.  Guitarists are frequent offenders.

For years now, a compact disc has popped up on the play-lists of one of my colleagues that I have resisted adding to my own.  The disc is of the Amsterdam Guitar Trio playing their own transcriptions of Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque and Petite Suite, and Gabriel Fauré’s Dolly.  This is music I love, but couldn’t help but feel the transcriptions gimmicky.  I’ve changed my mind.  After all this time, I have finally come around to liking it.  Those pieces aren’t so serious as to preclude a three-guitar treatment, and hearing it that way is a refreshing diversion.  Listen to this bit from the Petite Suite:

After years of avoiding this recording, I finally bought my own copy this week.

Debussy: Petite Suite; Suite Bergamasque. Fauré: Dolly, Op. 56. Chopin: Rondo in C Major, Op. 73.  Amsterdam Guitar Trio.  RCA 7800

I am going to try to bring back the “What Are You Listening to Lately?” feature I used to post regularly.

While I haven’t exactly been successful in making it an Earth Day tradition, today I did listen to Gustav Mahler’s great orchestral song cycle, Das Lied von der Erde.  The Decca compact disc with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic–and soloists James King and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau–is my only recording of this music, but I don’t feel the need to own another, such is the quality.

I will try to upload previous editions of “WAYLTL?” as time permits.

I know this older photo doesn’t show the composer’s correct age, but I love it anyway.

But Barber, of course, wrote much more.  Yesterday, for example, I listened to Gil Shaham’s wonderful recording of Barber’s Violin Concerto, which deserves a place in the regular concert repertoire.

Happy Birthday, Samuel Barber.

UPDATE:  When I arrived at work this morning, I noticed that Exploring Music this week is devoted to Samuel Barber.  Tomorrow, in fact, the show will feature Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and the fabulous Summer Music for Woodwind Quintet.  Friday’s show will have the Piano Concerto played by John Browning – a recording I have on CD.

For many people, I suppose, music is an evolving art, and what suits the taste is what is new and “relevant”.  I am not one of those people.  I don’t dispute that music evolves.  On the contrary, I have made it my profession to know how music has changed over time, and what those slow, incremental changes sound like.  But I don’t care what is current or popular.  Indeed, my favorite piece of music of all time was first presented in 1721, and my favorite piece of popular music was written over thirty years ago.  Music, to me, needn’t be modern.  It needn’t even be relevant to my own experience.  But sometimes it is both, and those are happy occasions.  Bombadil’s new album, Tarpits and Canyonlands, is such a record.

Tarpits and Canyonlands explores one major theme: marriage.  It isn’t difficult to imagine how the band arrived at this concept.  The members all seem to be around the age when marriage is the thing to do.  At their Gainesville show this spring, there was a handwritten note on the electric piano which read, “Just Married”.  I am no longer a newlywed, which makes this album especially relevant, since one question prominently asked is, “What lies beyond the honeymoon?”

That clip is from later in the song, but in it you hear Bombadil employ a classic musical device, by bringing back the main musical motif of the song, heard here in the first verse:

And what lies far, far beyond the honeymoon, after decades of being married to the same person?  “What would you say of marriage after…I hurt your dream job offer because I was scared?”  What if “I broke your confidence with a lover that was in my past?”  What if “the nursery rhyme stork never brought a baby to you?”  This is marriage:

The messages in the lyrics are often serious, and even downright melancholy, when the music itself beguiles you into feeling more cheerful.  An up-tempo number with hand-clapping and a catchy piano riff reminds you of your “Sad Birthday”:

And even when you get a message from home, “they forgot to say ‘happy birthday’”.

The album’s most powerful lyric comes from a song called “So Many Ways to Die”.  I am wont to avoid a song with such a sinister title, but a more apt name might have been “So Many Ways to Stay Alive”, since the tune asks us to examine the way we look at our own bleak circumstances and find something positive.  “So many ways to think how differently we interpret the brink between the side of life worth living and the point at which you’re better off to sink”:

I hope you’ll forgive that I made a small edit in the clip above, because I wanted you to hear the second chorus, where the singer rises an octave from where he sang the first chorus.  I really appreciate the extra energy, and the strain in the voice seems honest and appropriate to me.  It’s my favorite moment in the whole album.

I don’t mean to suggest that Tarpits and Canyonlands is all unhappy, all the time.  “Oto the Bear”, and “Kuala Lumpur”, both of which they played at their Gainesville show, are jaunty and fun to sing along with.  “Laurita” is a Spanish-language song with a catchy tune and an adorable arrangement, complete with a change in rhythm – a frequent musical device on this album.

Tarpits and Canyonlands describes marriage as a pyramid.  That may not be instructive, and, indeed, it leaves more questions than answers.  But so do the Pyramids, and, sometimes, so does marriage.  And, though I don’t expect any album to last 4,000 years, I do anticipate that this record will remain a rich and rewarding document well beyond the honeymoon.

Not wanting the whole trip to be for naught, I strolled across the street to the post office, where I found in my box two parcel slips indicating that packages awaited me inside. Back in the glory days of 2001-2005, these salmon-colored cards were an almost daily notice of a newly acquired CD won on eBay. These days, however, I very seldom receive such booty, so these parcel notices caught me off guard.

The envelopes associated with said slips turned out to contain pleasant surprises: a new CD by pianist Wu Han performing Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky; and a brand new cloth-bound, hardcover book called Authenticity Is Now.

Authenticity Is Now is significant to me for the simple reason that it includes amongst its glossy color pages a photograph of mine. Verily, in Chapter 2, on page 48 you’ll find my full-page picture of a lawn ornament deer. An oddity, for sure, but that’s what the publisher, Ziba Design, asked me for. The people at Ziba seemed very nice, too. Huzzah, book!

The Wu Han CD came from the ArtistLed label, which I have mentioned here before. They are unique among classical music record labels in being run entirely by the artists themselves, who choose the repertoire and even the takes that make it to disc. David Finckel–of the Emerson String Quartet–and pianist Wu Han–co-director of the Music at Menlo Festival–are well-served by the ArtistLed label, as the performances and recordings are of a consistently high quality.

This new disc includes Tchaikovsky’s Les Saisons, Op. 37, which is a piece I have loved for some time, particularly the sixth movement, “Juin: Barcarolle”. Wu Han plays it with a distinct pulse and less affectation than I have heard from most other performers.

My only regret is perhaps absurdly persnickety, and concerns a subtle bit of phrasing that I have grown so fond of in Vladimir Ashkenazy’s Decca set. Listen for the note cluster:

Ashkenazy uses a good deal of rubato–perhaps too much for some–but I love that little bit of dissonance. It is less evident in Wu Han’s recording, but nobody will accuse her of being overly-sentimental for it either. The Rachmaninoff Preludes on the disc are all excellently done, the Scriabin Sonata No. 4, Op. 30 is an interesting and welcome programming choice, and Liebesfreud by Kreisler is a lovely filler. I can enthusiastically recommend this and other ArtistLed recordings.

So, a good day at the mail box.

I had not expected to be able to attend, but at the last minute realized I could. So, after dinner at The Top, I dropped off Mrs. Hill at home and made my way to campus, and barely had time to park and buy my ticket. But what a ticket! In the past, when Miriam regularly received complimentary tickets to classical music performances through her work, we’d find ourselves in the very front row. It was from front row-center that we watched performances by Sir James Galway, Gil Shaham, Joshua Bell, Lang Lang, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, the Tokyo String Quartet, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Philharmonic, and so on. But all things must pass, and once Miriam left her old job the free ride was over.

Last night, however, a mix of public apathy and good luck scored me seat AA 102 (the very seat from which I once listened to Garrison Keillor make up fantastic tales about life in Minnesota). I was only six feet from a Steinway played by Murray Perahia. He began with the Partita No. 4 in D Major, BWV 828 by Bach, which he played brilliantly. The tempos were swift, but always with a pulse, and though he used a fairly wide dynamic range, he mostly eschewed the sustain pedal. Next was Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 15 in D Major, Op. 28 “Pastoral”. He made it sound easy, even the extremely technical playing of the Rondo movement. After intermission was Brahms’ gorgeous Six Piano Pieces, Op. 118, two Chopin Études, and the “Heroic” Polonaise in A Flat Major, Op. 53, all of which he played with breathtaking virtuosity. Without exaggeration, Perahia’s pianism was nothing short of astonishing – technically impeccable and stylish beyond reproach. The crowd–depressingly small–erupted into a frenzy of applause at the conclusion, and we were treated to some Schumann and Schubert as encores. I couldn’t help but smile at the incomparable bargain that was my $10 front row ticket.

Occasionally, following concerts at the Phillips Center, artists will sign autographs. At intermission, however, the absence of a table in the lobby selling CDs made it fairly clear that there would be no such meet-and-greet with Murray Perahia. But, after the concert I approached the general manager, Michael Blachly, and asked if I could thank Mr. Perahia for his wonderful performance. He asked me to wait near the door to the Black Box Theater. Shortly after, Mr. Perahia entered, still in his tuxedo. We shook hands, and before I could even ask him to sign my program, he apologized to me and a few other piano students behind me, saying that his recent surgeries make it uncomfortable for him to write. I completely understood. His graciousness was refreshing after Yefim Bronfmann’s odd refusal to autograph a concert program while willingly signing his CDs. In any case, I told Mr. Perahia how glad I was he played Bach, since I have been enjoying his English Suites and Goldberg Variations tremendously. Indeed, his Goldbergs are easily my favorite now. He told me it was very kind of me to say so, and we shook hands again. Then I was on my way home to enjoy The Office.

So, a fabulous Thursday evening.

UPDATE: The Chicago Tribune published a review of Perahia’s identical recital there, and it squares pretty well with what I heard.

So, yesterday after work I rode my bike by the store and pulled the disc from the new release rack, priced $13.88. I raced home–mostly to beat an imminent thunderstorm–and once Mrs. Hill left for the gym I slipped it into the player and awaited rock.

I got it; Magic is loud, the signal boosted such that you must be aware of your stereo’s volume before you press play. “Radio Nowhere” was what I had heard before, a catchy, straight-up rock number. I really enjoyed the next three songs: “Livin’ in the Future” is an R&B number à la “10th Avenue Freeze Out”; and “Your Own Worst Enemy” is sung in a style more reminiscent of Bruce’s old “heroic” voice than almost anything he’s recorded in over a decade. I was less immediately impressed with “Gypsy Biker”, though after a few listens it has grown on me – ditto “Devil’s Arcade”, those two being my least favorite on the album, though both imminently listenable. “Magic” starts so atmospherically, and it has grown on me, too. “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” is lyrically the strongest on the album, and the music is great, too.

But, far-and-away my favorite song on the new album–and now must count as one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs ever–is “I’ll Work For Your Love”. The instant it began, with a bright piano tune, bursting into jangly pop-rock, I immediately began to smile, and didn’t stop until it ended. I love the melody, I love the words. In fact, I couldn’t like it more even it were sung by a chorus of cardinals playing harpsichords. Listen to the beginning:

Magic is a fantastic album, well worth the wait, and I easily his best album since Born in the USA, if not The River. If you aren’t automatically averse to Bruce Springsteen, I’d encourage you to buy it, and give it three listens. By the third spin, you’ll be you’ll agree with everything I have said.

This morning I pulled several sets of La Bohème off my shelf and compared and contrasted performances of what I consider to be the best tenor aria of all, “Che gelida manina”, sung by the poet Rodolfo in the first act. What I determined was that, between Roberto Alagna, Carlo Bergonzi, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, it’s the Pav who did it best. Certainly, Bergonzi is stylish and elegant, but Pavarotti has the right combination of warmth and charm and hope. Hear the climactic high C here: