Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

Well, our upcoming fall concert-going season is pretty well set, and I’m looking forward to some exciting live music. Here are the events we’re planning to attend. How about you?

September 4-5: Chicago Jazz Festival (one of the nation’s premiere jazz events, and it’s all free!)

September 19: Aimee Mann (Old Town School of Folk Music)

September 25: Hyde Park Jazz Festival (Almost as good as the Chicago Jazz Festival, and it’s all free, too)

September 30: Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Symphony Center; Riccardo Muti conducts Mozart and Haydn)

October 1: Eels (Metro)

October 26: Sakamoto Ryuichi (Vic Theatre)

November 13: Stew and The Negro Problem, featuring Heidi Rodewald (Museum of Contemporary Art)

December 2: Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Symphony Center; Pierre Boulez conducts Schoenberg and Janáček)

It must be summer, cuz you’re never around (a good line stolen from the Fountains of Wayne). But I protest: I really am around. You just wouldn’t know it from the paucity of blog updates lately. I’m juggling a large number of rather rather bulky and wobbly projects these days.

I did manage to catch some of the baseball All Star Game last night. When I heard the news yesterday morning about former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, I had to smile at the timing. Back in his heyday in the 1970s and 80s, if the Yankees didn’t make it to the World Series in a particular year Steinbrenner would always pull some stunt right in the middle of the series (fire his manager, berate his team captain, whatever) to steal the headlines away from the teams still playing for the championship. So of course the man would pass away on the day of the All Star Game, assuring that all the coverage would focus not on the mid-season classic, but on the Boss.

Yankees’ fans clearly held the man in great affection. As a Twins’ fan and therefore a congenital Yankees’ hater, I generally despised him and everything he stood for as a baseball owner. But as several tributes I’ve read point out, wouldn’t it have been great to have a Twins’ owner as committed to winning as Steinbrenner was with the Yankees? Anyhow, I imagine he is up in heaven now (or, given the Damn Yankees thematic here, down there below), trying to rehire Billy Martin.

The very odd Nagoya sumo tournament got underway Sunday. Something like a quarter of the wrestlers in the top two divisions are suspended or banned due to the gambling/yakuza scandals, and NHK has gotten all holy about this and is refusing to televise the bouts live. Yokozuna Hakuho will no doubt take the title, as usual–on Tuesday he broke his own personal record of 32 consecutive wins. But with so many of the usual faces sitting this one out, the tournament should generate some unusual results. For starters, it’s a terrific opportunity for lower ranked wrestlers to leapfrog up the rankings.

Other than that, what have we been up to? Last Saturday night, we headed downtown to catch the Grant Park Orchestra play a free concert in Millenium Park under the energetic baton of female conductor Xian Zhang. We liked the program very much, as did Tribune critic John von Rhein and Sun-Times critic Andrew Patner. They played a piece by the contemporary composer Chen Yi, Prokofiev’s “Suite from Love for Three Oranges,” and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 in D Major. Didn’t mind the raindrops or the firetruck sirens hardly at all. It must be summer.

Bernard Haitink is stepping down later this month as principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony, and he’s going out with a bang: he’s leading the orchestra through the full cycle of Beethoven symphonies in a special series of concerts this summer. Satoko and I headed downtown to Symphony Center last night to catch the penultimate program in the series: it closes out this weekend with, of course, the Ninth.

They opened last night with Symphony #1 in C Major, Opus 21, a work in which Beethoven doesn’t realize yet that he is Beethoven. It’s a pleasant combination of Mozart and Haydn, and the orchestra played it smoothly: at times, I found myself imagining an accordion winding its way through a Viennese waltz as I floated down the Danube River. We noted that concertmaster Robert Chen, one of our favorites, was absent from the stage, his place ably filled by assistant concertmaster Yuan-Qing Yu.

The first half closed out with the more Beethoven-like Leonore Overture No. 3. Here, the real stars of the evening began to emerge: the woodwind section, especially principal flutist Mathieu Dufour, who played with such aching beauty that the audience exploded in cheers when Haitink acknowledged him during the ovation. On the haunting trumpet call from the distance that occurs twice in the piece, it seemed to me that none of the visible members of the brass section were playing, and I wondered if they were using an extra trumpeter in the back corridors behind the stage (we saw the orchestra use this trick with the chimes-from-hell in Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique a year or two ago). But no one emerged from backstage during the ovation, so now I’m not so sure….

After the intermission, the orchestra played my favorite of the symphonies, No. 7 in A Major, Opus 92. The last time I saw this rendered live was about fifteen years ago in a wretched, underrehearsed summer gig by the Minnesota Orchestra, but last night was simply brilliant. The cellos and basses at the beginning of the second movement played with such warmth as to be physiologically chilling. The woodwinds again played spectacularly well (the cheers they received were even louder than those following the Leonore overture). Robert Chen was in his usual seat for the piece, and the violins played wonderfully. Haitink took things fast, especially in the third and fourth movements: I cut my teeth on the Seventh with George Szell’s impatient recording with the Cleveland Orchestra, but last night Haitink left even Szell in the dust. But it all worked magnificently well, and the audience lept to its feet for an enthusiastic standing ovation at the conclusion.

For the first time all evening, as he slowly shuffled off and then back onto the stage to acknowledge the applause, Haitink looked his age (81). He had conducted with great energy and fire, and it was clear now that he had given his all during the performance–just as he has given his all during his four-tenure here in Chicago. Godspeed, Mr. Haitink, and thanks for a magnificent 7th. And here’s hoping the woodwind section sticks around for a few more years: it will be fun to see what Riccardo Muti, the incoming Music Director, does with their talents.

Mark Swed of the LA Times writes of an interesting recent experiment in classical music performance: a string quartet performed in a pitch black space. Composer Georg Friedrich Haas’ Third String Quartet instructs the performers to play in utter darkness, and the JACK Quartet did its best to comply this past Monday, mobilizing ushers with night-vision goggles and fire marshals for safety. They even required all audience members to sign a release form prior to the concert.

How did it go? Swed’s description:

I found that the quartet profoundly dismantled my sense of linear time. Time seemed so slow at points that I could space out without missing anything. When the JACK got a bit rambunctious – the score calls for players to invite each other to join in or reject certain musical strategies and there is even room for competition – a listener could feel part of the exciting action. Ultimately, though, each of us, in this pitch-black, was alone, in our personal experiences yet acutely conscious of neighbors. I heard no coughs and only minimal shuffling.

I neglected to mention it here previously, but a week ago I attended the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s final concert of the year at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall. The evening opened with a fierce rendition of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Thomas Zehemair on violin and conducting. One reviewer describes Zehemair’s performance as “audacious”; my companion thought it mostly annoying. I found it striking and dramatic: I’ve never seen a violinist perform a cadenza, for example, as a kind of funereal dialogue with the timpanist.

The second half of the program opened with Ernst Krenek’s Symphonic Elegy for Strings, op. 105, which Zehemair announced from the stage was created while the composer was temporarily on the faculty of Hamline University in St. Paul. The Krenek piece was written as an elegy for Anton Webern, whose Symphony, Op. 21, came next. The evening closed out with a rather perfunctory performance of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, not bad but lacking the passion that had fired up the Beethoven.

All in all, it was a good, if not spectacular, evening at the symphony. Perhaps they should have tried killing the lights.

The weekend began Friday afternoon at Symphony Center for a matinee performance, Pierre Boulez leading the Chicago Symphony as part of the celebrations for his 85th birthday. I’d never seen the great man conduct before and was struck with his economy of motion: no over-emoting for him. Whatever the style, it worked: the orchestra played as well as I have heard it. The program opened with the latest incarnation of Boulez’ own Livre pour cordes, a particularly warm instance of serialism. They moved on from there to take on the tricky twists and turns of Bartok’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra, played brilliantly by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich as the keyboard soloists. It’s a work in which Bartok explores the percussive nature of the piano, setting the keyboards in complex dialogues with drums, xylophones, and other struck instruments. The program closed with a thrilling rendition of Stravinsky’s The Firebird played in the full ballet version. John von Rhein, the Chicago Tribune’s classical music critic, was similarly enthusiastic in his review of the Thursday evening performance.

In the meanwhile, on the other side of the world, yokozuna Asashoryu, the bad boy from Mongolia, took charge of the New Year Sumo tournament. He wrapped up the title on Day 14. It was his 25th career championship, putting him in third place in the record book. The victory came in the final tournament for Uchidate Makiko, Asashoryu’s long-time nemesis on the Yokozuna Deliberation Council, making it all the more satisfying. Moreover, Asashoryu gave us yet another spectacular example of his trademark misbehavior during the tournament, coming close to getting himself arrested in a drunken brawl late at night after Day 6. The tournament, as expected, also saw the retirement of the great ozeki Chiyotaikai. Yokozuna Hakuho managed to defeat Asashoryu in their direct meeting on the final day, but that victory was purely moral, as Asashoryu was simply killing time until the trophy ceremony.

Friday night ended with another classical concert: Europa Galante led by violinist Fabio Biondi at Mandel Hall. A period instruments ensemble, they opened with two lovely pieces by Telemann. Guest flutist Frank Theuns could easily be the model for a new muppet character. They closed with an edgy version of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, the schmaltz factor reduced to almost zero, reminding us in the process that a terrific piece of music lies buried beneath all the abuse that mass culture has heaped on to it. Two short encore pieces by Corelli and Gluck (the latter had the violinists plucking their way through) brought the evening to an airy close. The Chicago Classical Review website liked the performance, as the did the critic for the New York Times, who caught much of the same program last week at Carnegie Hall (where, no doubt, the acoustics were better….).

It turns out I’m not the only person who has had to make the Los Angeles vs. Chicago decision in recent years. Flutist Matheiu Dufour has switched from the Chicago Symphony to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and back again, and now there’s a bit of a kerfuffle in the press about what it all means. Check out the passionate rebuttals from readers in the comments section, too.

Who says classical music is boring? I have a ticket for one of the Chicago Symphony’s concerts next week celebrating the 85th birthday of Pierre Boulez (a man who has stirred a ruckus or two in his day, now that I think about it). I’ll keep my eyes and ears peeled for hints of sabotage and smoldering passions among the musicians….

Paying homage to music at the Church of Beethoven (LA Times).

It’s that time of year: when critics and others assemble their “best of” lists. For the first time ever, I’ve discovered my own name on one of them: the website for Public Radio International’s “The World” has included Natsume Soseki’s Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings, which I co-edited with Atsuko Ueda and Joseph Murphy, on its list of “World Books: International Reads for the Holidays.” I feel flattered, even if the author describes our book as “the nerdiest pick on my list.”

Over at the Japan Times, Mark Schilling has posted his best ten list of Japanese films from 2009. I haven’t seen a single one, alack. Meanwhile, over at the Daily Yomiuri, the erstwhile “Wm. Penn,” whose column I have been reading religiously for two decades now, gives us her picks for the best of 2009 Japanese television dramas.

Closer to home, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune, picks the top rock albums of the year. Alex Ross of the New Yorker does the same for classical music recordings.

As for me, I’m just glad to be done with my grading. Now it’s time to plow ahead and try to finish that last unwritten chapter in my book on postwar popular music in Japan….

It’s been a lively weekend so far. It started with my first ever visit to Buddy Guy’s Legends downtown on Friday evening. I saw a remarkable set by Michigan guitarist/singer Larry McCray. Too often nowadays, a blues show tries to get by on showboating and on the charisma of the front man. It was refreshing to see McCray’s sharp band bring down the house relying instead on sheer talent and creativity. He’s got a terrific style that contains elements of B.B. King and the Allman Brothers (both of whom McCray has worked with in the past), and he tosses off these little atomic guitar fills between vocal lines that leave you flabbergasted, the way John Lee Hooker used to do (though McCray sounds nothing like Hooker).

McCray also possesses a wonderful voice full of gravel (again, B.B. King comes to mind). In other words, he brings the full package. I have seen the future of the blues, and I’ve just ordered my copy of his 1993 album, Delta Hurricane.

Then, yesterday afternoon, we took Sonia to see the Joffrey Ballet’s Nutcracker at the Auditorium Theater. It’s a nice holiday spectacle with amazing sets and costumes. The stage gets a little crowded during the first half, when narrative dominates. The second half, when the real dancing happens, was lovely (and the handful of crying children in matinee audience actually added to the atmosphere, I thought), though Sonia found it a bit boring. I always think the Arabian dance should be shorter and the Russian dance longer, but that’s probably a sign of my bad taste.

Now it’s back to grading for me. I hope you’re having a fine weekend, wherever you may be.

Apologies for the dearth of postings here recently. I’ve been, uhm, busy. Looking back over the past several days now, on a lovely autumn Saturday morning, I see that it was a week in which evil flared up, but in which the power of music to tame wild demons again came to the rescue.

Evil: is there any other word for a World Series championship by the New York Yankees? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I’m supposed to be happy for Matsui Hideki being named series’ MVP title in what may be his last appearance with the team. That changes nothing: a Yankees’ championship is satanic, demonic, evil. If anyone doubted that the dark forces were at work, a mere twelve hours after New York knocked off the Phillies in the decisive game, their Asian counterparts on the nether side of the veil, the Tokyo Giants, hit two home runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to come back from a 2-1 deficit and defeat the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Game 5 of the Japan Series. These are the final days, I was sure. What more proof was required?

But music conquers all. It’s called catharsis, purification. It can handle even the Yankees. Thursday night, we went to our youngest’s eighth grade Fall Concert. She sang in the choir, which gave a lovely performance, including a terrific piece I’d not heard before, “Grumble Too Much” by Ruth Elaine Schram. The school band and school orchestra played as well. The highlight of the latter was Richard Meyer’s “Rosin Eating Zombies from Outer Space.” It’s a wonderful piece for a middle-school orchestra: watching the players grin in anticipation of what was coming next made my night. Here’s video of another middle-school ensemble playing the piece.

The next night we returned to the same venue (Mandel Hall) to witness a transcendent concert by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra with soprano Dawn Upshaw. All of the pieces performed had roots in folk musics from around the world. The evening opened with an eye-opening rendition of Gonzales Piazzola’s tango-inspired Fuga y Misterio. Upshaw then joined the ensemble for the world premiere of Alberto Iglesia In the Land of the Lemon Trees, a cycle of three songs. Upshaw was in marvelous voice for the piece, which featured striking interplay between guitar and orchestra. Iglesias came on stage at the conclusion to accept an enthusiastic ovation.

The second half of the evening was even better. Upshaw sang Osvaldo Golijov’s “Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra” like an angel, able to fill the darkness with light. The lullaby of the opening “Night of the Flying Horses,” with touches of klezmer music throughout, and Upshaw’s incredible voice on the closing piece, “How Slow the Wind,” left me with goosebumps. Then it was the orchestra’s turn to take over, with Steven Copes as the soloist for Prokofiev’s grand old (1935: the oldest work on the program) Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor. It’s one of my favorite works. The concerto dips its toes, then its foot, then its whole leg, into lively Russian folk music. Copes sawed away at his fiddle in the dramatic moments, and the orchestra played with a disciplined energy: astonishing.

And so once again light replaces darkness, music conquers noise, order tames chaos. Thanks to the ritual cleansing performed by the two concerts, no doubt, the Minnesota Twins have acquired a new shortstop, giving unexpected hope for 2010. Evil has been contained. To hell with the Yankees. Literally.

[UPDATE: John von Rhein, the Chicago Tribune's classical music critic, sings similar praises of last Friday's concert, calling Upshaw "a wonder at evoking moods and expressive nuances" and "absolutely compelling" and describing the Prokofiev as "dashing." Dashing, it certainly was. In the meanwhile, all hail Satan: in Japan, the Giants knocked off the Fighters in Game 6 of the Japan Series on Saturday night, delivering their 21st championship to the lord of darkness. All is vanity.]