Stravinsky Festival

I recently heard a wonderful mini-festival played by the New York Philharmonic, focusing on works by Stravinsky.   I heard his Violin Concerto, Symphony in Three Movements, Agon, Movements for Piano and Orchestra, and Apollo, among others, and the works were complemented by performances of four orchestral works by Webern, along with works by Bach, Ravel, and others.   The festival was timed to coincide with the Met's performance of "The Rake's Progress", Stravinsky's only opera.

Well, actually, that's not really true, though I wish it were. The New York Philharmonic did no such thing.   Besides the Met's performance, all of the other works were performed by the orchestra of the New York City Ballet, as part of their series "Balanchine Black and White".   I sometimes think that if it weren't for George Balanchine, we wouldn't hear any Stravinsky besides the big three early ballets.   (I exaggerate, of course.)   For a composer who has been at times labelled "the greatest 20th century composer" (forget whatever that means), this is an appalling circumstance.  What I think it comes down to is that the audience (and the concert programmers who need them) love the early Dionysian Stravinsky, and have little interest in the decidedly more Apollonian Stravinsky of the 1920's and onwards.   This holds true as much for the 1920's neoclassical works such as the "Concerto for Piano"  as well as the later, more austere serial works of the 1950's and 1960's.  Nobody seems to want to hear or play them, which is very unfortunate.  All they want is more Petrushkas.

What is also wonderful about the New York City Ballet is the respect shown for the music.  A recent performance of Balanchine's delightful "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" began with an introduction to the music.   The orchestra played through a number of excerpts from the piece, with no dancers present, and the conductor discussed the work in intelligent and accessible ways.   The audience seemed to love it (and so did I).  And the subsequent performance of the ballet was certainly enriched by our heightened sensitivity to the music.  (To say nothing of the importance of the music being played live!)
It still amazes me how many reviewers of dance can write a long review of a dance performance and sometimes not even mention the music, as if the piece was danced in silence.  (Though most of the professional critics in the New York Times are quite conscientious about this.)   Of course I am obviously prejudiced towards dance in which the music plays a significant role; but I fear these days that choreographers and dancers are less knowledgable about all kinds of music, and lack a good understanding of classical music especially.  

Schoenberg Septet

I heard a wonderful afternoon concert at the Graduate Center of CUNY.  The main reason I went was to hear the Schoenberg Suite Op. 29 for piano, three strings, and 3 clarinets (E-flat, B-flat, and bass).   This is an absolutely fascinating work, one of my favorites by Schoenberg, and virtually never performed.   It moves at a mercurial pace, with an incredible density of ideas and textures, and features the very quirky, disjunct "dance" rhythms from Schoenberg's middle "neoclassical"  period.  Schoenberg makes a lot out of contrasting the group of three strings with the group of three clarinets; the stage was set up with the two groups facing each other (and the piano behind them). The performers were a nice mix of distinguished new music veterans (Ursula Oppens, Fred Sherry, and Charles Nedich) and some young new music virtuosos.  I think it would probably take a hundred rehearsals to properly balance every detail and nuance in this very dense score, but the players played with convincing musicality and commitment, and a lot of it came through.
Fred Sherry's introductory talks were great fun; he started off by simply saying "Arnold Schoenberg" in such a way as to introduce a spontaneous round of applause from the audience; that's not the usual audience reaction to his name, to say the least.
The concert began with a quartet for piano, violin, cello and clarinet by Hindemith, dating from 1938.   I usually find Hindemith from that period to be somewhat generic and bland, but this piece has some interesting moments, and my ears were more attuned to Hindemith, having heard his "Four Temperaments" from the same period two nights before.
It's not every afternoon that you get to hear Schoenberg's Septet!   Many thanks to my friend Richard who alerted me to the concert.   It's worth noting that it becomes increasingly more difficult to find out what's going on in the classical musical world in New York.   Time Out magazine used to list almost everything; then, a little while back, they trimmed the list to selected events.   As of this week, the classical music listings are gone, except for a few selected highlights.   Many other possible sources in print  are highly selective, like the NY Times and the New Yorker.  No one wants to waste precious print space on being inclusive, and no one on line that I can find seems to be picking up the slack in a reliable way, though the website "New York Classical Review" does a pretty good job.

It makes me nostalgic for the good old days when I would receive my monthly New York New Music calendar, with all the events conveniently listed on one big page.