Bruckner and Furrer

I have never been a big fan of the music of Anton Bruckner.  Part of my attitude comes from the fact that I have never heard the music live.   So when I found out that Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Orchestra were performing the complete symphonies at Carnegie Hall, I thought I should check it out.   I went to a rehearsal of the 7th symphony and we both went to a performance of the 8th symphony, generally considered to be his best.  I came away considerably enlightened as to what Bruckner is about, but also with a clearer sense of why it is that I am not absolutely fond of the music.  First of all, I have to say the performance was superlative; I can't imagine an orchestra doing this music any better.   And Barenboim really knows the music, apparently he conducted the entire cycle from memory (along with playing several Mozart piano concertos on the same concerts!)
But I have to say that I think Bruckner must be the most rhythmically uninteresting composer in the canon; everything is so square, and there is very little in the way of rhythmic excitement.  Austerity rules; nothing is flashy.  But he has a magnificent ear for building up long sequences with contrasting harmonies and orchestral textures.  If you adjust to his sense of musical development, the music becomes interesting.   It feels very much like architecture, in this case created on a grand 90 minute scale.

A few days later, we went to a Composer Portrait concert of the music of Beat Furrer at Miller Theater.   I had heard of him, but had never encountered a live performance of his music.   It was a great concert; I really liked his music.   Furrer is Swiss but lives in Vienna.   I would situate his music somewhere in the territory of Lachenmann and Haas, with some of the rhythmic liveliness of Nancarrow.   My favorite piece was "Spur", which you can find on YouTube with a video of the score.   The music is quite dense and fast, but, at the same time, you have a real sense of shape and contrast to the piece.   (What was very vivid and clear in the live performance though,  does not come across so well in the YouTube version.)  He has a wonderful sense of instrumental color and how to make the unorthodox sound musical (like Lachenmann).  The performances by the ensemble Either/Or, were astonishingly good.  The musicians played with both great conviction and virtuosity; they clearly knew what they were playing.

Kerry James Marshall

My brother David and his wife Kim were in town, and we went to see the Kerry James Marshall retrospective at the Met Breuer.  It was a great show, and a good example of how a large-scale retrospective can have a much stronger impact than just a few exhibited paintings.   Marshall is both brilliant in his ideas and virtuosic in painting skills.   To the extent that the work of any artist can be reduced  to a few sentences, Marshall's project is about the insertion of the African-American experience into the broader tropes of art history.   While I am normally adverse to the use ideological constructs, in this case, the sophistication of Marshall's conceptions and the skill with which he creates them is dazzling.  The paintings are fascinating to look at, filled with visual ideas that are subtle and intriguing.   And he uses all kinds of other materials worked into the texture, even gold glitter (!).  

These photos from the Met's website don't really do justice to the work; not only are most of the paintings really large (10-12 feet wide or bigger) so the fine details of the work are not visible in these photos, but all the subtle gradations of black simply don't come through.

The was a very nice component of the show called "Kerry James Marshall Selects", where Marshall was given the opportunity to go though the Met's collections and pick out works that he wanted to be shown with his retrospective.   It was a fascinatingly diverse and revelatory selection which resonated wonderfully with the show.  It also showed what the Met can do that not many other museums can do.   A great exhibit!