Review: Richmond Symphony

Arthur Fagen conducting
Nov. 14, Carpenter Theatre, Richmond CenterStage

None of the nine candidates for music director of the Richmond Symphony has faced tougher challenges in sonic choreography and direction of heavy traffic than Arthur Fagen takes on in conducting "Nanking! Nanking! A Threnody for Orchestra and Pipa" (2000) by the Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng.

The work, part-soundscape, part-contemplation, of the 1937 "rape of Nanking" – the sacking of the city, then China’s capital, and the slaughter of some 300,000 civilians by Japanese invaders – is scored for a very large orchestra, with augmented brass sections and an enormous battery of percussion employed in battle scenes of extraordinary violence and near-deafening volume.

Making music, rather than cataclysmic noise, of these sections requires tight control over orchestral forces, as well as a keen ear for instrumental balances and for the quantity and quality of sound that a concert hall can accommodate. A conductor also must effectively contrast the battle scenes with much quieter sections in which the leading voice is a pipa, or Chinese lute, played in these concerts by Yang Wei. Lutes generally are low-volume instruments, and the pipa is among the quietest and most subtle of lutes. (Even amplified, as it is in this piece, a solo pipa is rarely louder than a softly played harp.)

Fagen and the orchestra negotiated the battle scenes at an energy level suggesting abandon – deceptively so: lack of control is the last thing you want in performing music whose rhythms and voicings are so complex and crowded – yet not so relentlessly and not (quite) so deafeningly that the listener was left in a state of shock to absorb the lyrical, string-centered core of the work and the pipa’s bittersweet musings. The delicacy of the lute and its accompanists in the orchestra made as strong an impression as the brassy, percussive explosions in this performance.

Yang Wei’s virtuosity is tested maximally in "Nanking! Nanking!" but his ability to coax magical sounds from the pipa – and its way of imposing a deep quiet on an audience – was better showcased in a couple of solo encores. The first was another battle piece, the traditional Chinese tune (really, a fantasia) "Ashes of the Battlefield." The second was not what you would expect to hear played on a pipa. (In case he plays it again in the second concert, I won’t spoil the surprise.*)

Fagen framed the Bright Sheng work with 19th-century evergreens, Beethoven’s "Egmont" Overture and Franck’s Symphony in D minor. In both, as in Wagner’s "Siegfried Idyll" last weekend, the conductor obtained a big, warm romantic sonority without muddying colors or obscuring musical details.

The "Egmont" sounded warm but not quite focused, flabby in its accents. Fagen and the orchestra made the Franck an unusually (at least for me) engaging experience, sustaining momentum in tempos that threaten to plod and taking care to reveal Franck’s new wrinkles in repetitions and reappearances of the motifs around which this symphony is built. He also drew the fullest, warmest bass-string sound that the orchestra has produced since moving back into the Carpenter Theatre.

Weak bass has been the biggest flaw in orchestral sound in this acoustically renovated hall, and it was gratifying to hear that the problem is not insoluble. Winds and brasses are seated on risers for these concerts; that seems to produce a better blend.

The program repeats at 3 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Carpenter Theatre, Sixth and Grace streets. Tickets: $17-$72. Details: (800) 982-2787 (Ticketmaster); www.richmondsymphony.com

* Now it can be told: His second encore was "Home on the Range."

The gender factor

A musician's gender and sexual orientation don't count as much as they used to. Changing gender in mid-career, however, is another story, as Sara Davis (formerly David) Buechner tells The New York Times' Michael Winerip:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/fashion/15genb.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Gershwin-Grofé redux

One of the highlights of Marin Alsop's years as associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony came on Oct. 17, 1988, when she led George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" in its original jazz-band orchestration by Ferde Grofé and the Piano Concerto in F in the rarely heard version that Grofé prepared (against the composer's wishes) for Paul Whiteman. Alsop subsequently made an EMI Classics recording of Grofé's version of the concerto with pianist Leslie Stifelman, who had been the piano soloist in the Richmond concert.

Alsop is presenting much the same program this weekend with the Baltimore Symphony and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

The Baltimore Sun's Tim Smith reviews the first night:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/classicalmusic/2009/11/marin_alsop_jeanyves_thibaudet.html#more

Subsequent performances are on Nov. 14 at Meyerhoff Hall in Baltimore, Nov. 15 at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, MD, near Washington.

Details: www.bsomusic.org

Take your time

Wynton Marsalis, the trumpeter, jazz bandleader and composer, again has postponed the premiere of his "Blues Symphony" with the Atlanta Symphony. The premiere, originally planned for last summer, was rescheduled twice, most recently for Nov. 19; but the piece remains unfinished.

The plan now is a January premiere of two completed movements (out of a planned seven), and perhaps one or two others now in draft form, Pierre Ruhe reports at artscriticATL (the collective website of former Atlanta Journal-Constitution critics):

http://artsatl.typepad.com/artscriticatl/2009/11/breaking-news-wynton-marsalis-blues-symphony-world-premiere-postponed-again-atlanta-symphony-will-pl.html

The history of art-music composition is littered with blown deadlines, stray movements of works that never came together, rewrites (sometimes wholesale) of pieces whose flaws were revealed in first performances – and, of course, that nice batch of unfinished opuses by brand-name composers (Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mussorgsky, Bruckner, Mahler, Puccini, Berg) that sustains a cottage industry of musicological "completers."

A less high-falutin, and larger, industry of composer's helpers employs the orchestrators who produce the finished versions of film soundtracks and musicals (at least those that still use orchestras). Composers are cagey about acknowledging such help; but much of the music you hear at the movies or in musicals was conceived by the composer and largely fleshed out by someone else.

I don't know whether Marsalis works with helpers. Presumably he has someone to do finished copies of parts and other mundane stuff; but I can only guess about hands-on collaboration with an arranger or orchestrator. My guess is, no.

What I've heard of Marsalis' concert music sonically mirrors the personality of the man: A jangly energy kept under fairly tight control, a mind and personality that thrive on multiple stimuli and overlapping lines of thought. There's a lot going on in there. His performances and his compositions tend to be exclamatory, brightly colored, often episodic and abruptly shifting in mood or atmospherics, sometimes almost baroque in their busyness. If some helper is producing the orchestrations, that person is channeling Marsalis' personality with uncanny exactness.

Reconciling this creative personality to the blues couldn't be easy. This is not necessarily a slow music, but it is unhurried. "Take your time," or words to that effect, can be heard in countless old recordings of blues; its sibling, gospel; and its offspring, rhythm and blues. Whatever its stated tempo, the tune needs time to ripen emotionally. Its voices must have space to be expressive. Rush it, and all you've got is a dance tune with a lot of flatted notes.

I hope Marsalis takes his time with the "Blues Symphony." If he's looking for help, I recommend Fletcher Henderson, Ferde Grofé, Thelonious Monk, Maurice Ravel and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Wilkins makes the rounds

Thomas Wilkins, onetime associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony, currently music director of the Omaha Symphony and principal guest conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, is auditioning for music-director posts in Memphis and Chattanooga.

“I have two daughters who are both getting ready for college. I need one music director job for each daughter,” Wilkins tells the Omaha World-Herald's John Pitcher:

http://www.omaha.com/article/20091107/ENTERTAINMENT04/711079975

Bird-fancier's bequest

A charming story, with a multimillion-dollar happy ending for the Metropolitan Opera, by Daniel J. Wakin in The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/arts/music/11opera.html?ref=music

Facing the music, finding the money

Michael Kaiser, president of Washington's Kennedy Center, writes for The Huffington Post that the cost structures of American symphony orchestras – dominated by musicians' and conductors' salaries and guest artists' fees – chronically outweigh the orchestras' ability to generate revenue through ticket sales and fund-raising.

"[R]adical restructuring can be avoided if musicians and administrators embark on a reasonable, long-term planning process that addresses marketing strategies, fundraising approaches, and artistic initiatives. In other words, plans for activities that build revenue. But this rarely happens. . . . Without a more enlightened discussion, orchestras are going to continue to fail or to reduce their levels of art and education," Kaiser writes:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kaiser/does-the-symphonic-orches_b_350464.html

The Washington Post's Anne Midgette likens the woes of classical-music institutions to those of daily newspapers. "The main problem is that both fields seem to be incapable of coming up with an actual new business model, in part because both fields are so deeply invested in their own traditions that they tend to confuse those traditions with their function," Midgette writes:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-classical-beat/2009/11/kaiser_orchestras_fail.html#more

I’ve long thought that orchestras, especially those outside major cities and cultural centers, should adopt a model not unlike that of the old Kapelle, the musical establishments of royal courts and municipalities in pre-modern Central Europe. Musicians employed by these institutions gave orchestral and chamber concerts, played for opera, ballet and church services, and were the principal music teachers of their towns. This multi-platform employment scheme still exists in Europe, and less formally in many American cities, including Richmond and Norfolk, where symphony players also teach and work as theater and church musicians.

A promising twist in this country would be to add jazz to the performance-instructional mix. Symphony orchestras have all the instruments of jazz orchestras (a.k.a. big bands) except saxophones; and many symphony brass, percussion and keyboard musicians, as well as some string and reed players, are well-schooled in jazz. Add saxes to the roster, and the orchestra is as capable of playing Ellington as it is of playing Beethoven.

Building a jazz orchestra within a symphonic ensemble also addresses two issues that orchestras have been grappling with, not very successfully, for decades: Reinventing the dated and artistically feeble format of the pops concert (Arthur Fiedler died 30 years ago; the audience for his kind of programming is now dying off pretty rapidly); and making the orchestra relevant and welcoming to African-American musicians and listeners.

Another likely alteration to the symphony business model is making orchestras now classified as "regional" (based on their budgets, typically in the mid-seven figures) truly regional, performing in and drawing support from several cities or a whole state.

For decades, the business model of business has been one of consolidation into larger entities with longer reach – regional, national, global. Most members of symphony, opera, ballet and theater boards have experienced such consolidation in their own businesses and professions. That experience should temper hometown pride and other factors that have made arts groups averse to mergers.

The more slowly the U.S. economy recovers from the 2007-08 crash – and quick recovery, especially in employment numbers and property values, looks highly unlikely – the more financial stress will be felt by cultural institutions, and by educational institutions that indirectly support the arts by employing artists. Kaiser is correct in anticipating that many professional troupes in smaller cities will go under because their local base of support is too small to sustain them.

Virginia has two regional-class orchestras, the Richmond Symphony and Hampton Roads’ Virginia Symphony; smaller professional orchestras in Williamsburg, Virginia Beach, Roanoke and Fairfax; and more than a dozen community and university-based orchestras. The state’s population is 7 million, the fraction of which that attends classical-music events and contributes to classical-music organizations is large enough to support a major orchestra – comparable, say, to those of Baltimore, Atlanta or Dallas.

I doubt that a truly statewide orchestra will materialize. The Northern Virginia ensembles are part of the Washington cultural scene, and the performing-arts groups of the Roanoke-Blacksburg area have built a kind of mountain redoubt in Western Virginia (though not an impregnable one – Roanoke’s Mill Mountain Theatre is the biggest arts organization in the state, to date, to have shut down in this recession).

Still, in the arc of communities from Fredericksburg through Central Virginia to Hampton Roads, there is a sufficient base of audience and money to support a major orchestra, or at least a well-endowed regional. And ample financial incentive to consolidate into one, sooner rather than later.

The Richmond and Virginia symphonies should be talking merger – they should have started talking years ago; and the younger orchestras of Williamsburg and Virginia Beach should join the discussion.