Sprightly

A good week to think about new and better leadership. Riccardo Muti taking the podium the week after Dudamel gave audience and orchestra a good chance to compare and see if ours is greater than theirs, so to speak. They were both quite good, actually. Muti stayed on focus through all the hoopla surrounding his brief 3-concert run here. As a result, the Verdi Requiem hasn’t sounded better, at least not in this zip code. In the wrong hands the piece all to easily turns into a lurid sort of Opera buffa for the dearly departed. Perhaps disappointing a few, Muti took some of the John Philip Sousa out of the Requiem and restored a much-needed degree of sobriety. He had our long-suffering chorus in fine form as well. As before, the Maestro proved capable of making his mark in a gracious and even entertaining manner. In rehearsal, anecdotes, jokes, and various other remarks can easily bore or infuriate an orchestra when handled ineptly. In this case they mostly served to focus attention...

Last week Gustavo Dudamel made his 2nd, 3rd or 4th appearance here. I’m a bit foggy on the number because before last week I’ve managed to be off every time he came to town. Some conductors are better in theory than in practice but Dudamel mostly delivered the goods and managed to live up to the hype preceding his arrival. Sold-out houses, in spite of some horrible weather, were also very encouraging to see. Dudamel accomplished the unlikely feat of attracting the rapt attention of both audience and orchestra alike, with only a few of the usual exceptions among the latter. There was some debate as to whether his long drawn-out pose at the end of the Barber Adagio might have been over the top, but not all conductors have sufficient cachet with the audience to prevent the loutish, premature applause that so often mars the endings of quiet pieces. If you’ve got it flaunt it, I guess. And considering how often in this business greatness and self-indulgence find each other locked in an ...

Well, not entirely. First, a couple New Year’s resolutions. This year, I will try and be more responsive to emailed questions. I get a fair number of those and although I have read them all, chuckled or gnashed my teeth where appropriate, I acknowledge being pretty lousy about answering them. I will try and respond to comments posted on the blog as well. However, if you have a question you really want answered by me – for what that is worth – better to email it. I may even paste it into the blog and use it for a post – god knows I’m running short on material. Let me know if you don’t want that to happen. Speaking of the deity, please don’t send me quotes from the Bible, or any other religious tome for that matter, I have no idea what to do with those. I will also try and post more regularly. A few readers commented on the boring posts listing rehearsal times, etc. – and those were for the most part people who didn’t even have to attend the boring rehearsals in question – so I ...

Ein Heldenleben, undoubtedly a masterpiece, nevertheless rubs me the wrong way. I know as a (working) bassist I’m supposed to like it, love it even, since it is chock full of popular audition passages, but I can’t get past the things I don’t like about the piece, its gigantism, all that bombast, to name a couple. Not my cup of tea, as they say. I wonder if any hero ever dared to play softly? Anyhow, when the option to take those concerts off presented itself, the choice seemed obvious. As mentioned, Heldenleben contains more double bass audition passages per page than almost any other piece in the literature. The passage at (rehearsal) number nine has probably ruined more dreams of an orchestral career than any other. Sometimes you might see a few gummy old bass players, veterans of auditions long past huddled toward the back of the bar. Over a stale pint or two they recount in hushed reverent tones disastrous failures, successes won at terrible cost. Their Ypres, Verdun, The Marne, un...

Never in my life have I received such treatment. They threw an apple at me! Well, watermelons are out of season. Lasspari and Otis B Driftwood (The Marx Brothers A Night at the Opera ) Boo…Boooo!…BOOOOO!!!! Starting softly and getting louder, the gentleman got in three boos before the rest of the audience knew the piece had finished. Definitely not one of our fans who calls out Bravoooooo, these were unquestionably expressions of displeasure. But whether directed at the Lutoslawsky 4th symphony or our rendition of it under Haitink’s baton, nobody could tell. A brief scan of the composer’s biography makes me wonder if our pro Stalin fan (yes we have one) had returned. I don’t know if it comes as a surprise or not, but the general reaction among orchestra members to audience boos isn’t very disapproving. Perhaps this comes from a sense of smugness about our self worth and the ability for each of us singly to fall back on the belief that the composer, conductor, soloist, or somebody else,...

The other day somebody complained to me about the amount of selling on the Internet, what you might call the pornography of self-promotion – buy my gear, buy my CD, my method book, whatever. I thought it high time I dip my foot briefly into those waters. The Chicago Bass Ensemble will be performing on Monday, December 15, 7 PM at Heaven Gallery, 1550 North Milwaukee, 2nd floor. Information about the CBE may be found here , and the Heaven Gallery, here . I am also happy to announce, at long last, the re emergence of Discordia Music –publishers of music for the double bass. We’ve spent the last year or so reworking our editions, and five are now ready. Look for more soon. Information about Discordia Music may be found here . A few words about the editions: Bach - 3 Sonatas BWV 1027, BWV 1028, BWV 1029. For Double Bass and Cembalo(originally for Viola da Gamba) A005 The three Gamaba Sonatas are now combined in one volume. This edition is an arrangement for double bass, based on resea...

Sorry, but due to non bass blog activities, I’ve managed to fall way behind again… Mahler 2 is one of those ‘special’ events on the season schedule although it comes up almost every other season, or seems like it anyway. I’m always happy to see Mahler 2 programmed though, mainly because it reminds me of one of my favorite pieces, the Berio Sinfonia , which doesn’t come up nearly often enough unfortunately. Haitink’s laissez-faire approach certainly has its merits, especially when applied to the large forms. When signing on for a long sea voyage you want a captain whose feet are firmly planted on deck, eyes forward, piercing the fog, steering a steady course towards the distant shore, not a man who frets and throws tantrums over every last rivet, or wastes time reshuffling the deck chairs while the ship drifts idly with the current. Then again, Mahler 2 has a lot of rivets holding it together. During the performances I found myself a little nervous about how many could pop before we...