7/4

December 27, 2007 A Legacy of Audacity Is Granted an Encore By ANTHONY TOMMASINI Ralph Shapey in 1996. In his later years the flinty American composer Ralph Shapey, who died in 2002 at 81, would rail against the conservatism of the mainstream classical music scene in America. In fist-shaking defiance he wrote formidable, complex and ingenious works. And if people resisted, that was their problem. Yet for all his kvetching Shapey has had a roster of champions — major musicians like the violinist Robert Mann, the cellist Joel Krosnick, the pianist Gilbert Kalish and the Juilliard String Quartet — who are challenged and exhilarated by his uncompromising works. As an admirer of Shapey’s audacious music, I feared that performances and recordings of his works would diminish after his death, when he was no longer around to agitate. Alas, with scant exceptions, his pieces have not noticeably figured on concert programs in recent years in New York. But two recordings released this year suggest that Shapey is winning support among the new generation of performers, and that some committed foundations and recording companies continue to support important American music. “Music by Ralph Shapey” is the title of a recording on the Centaur label featuring the violinist Miranda Cuckson and the pianist Blair McMillen. Ms. Cuckson is a brilliant young performer who plays daunting contemporary music with insight, honesty and temperament. Mr. McMillen, a fixture on New York’s contemporary-music scene, is a dynamic virtuoso drawn to new music not through some somber sense of mission but because he is thrilled by it. This project, conceived by the performers, was awarded grants of support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University. The other recording is a two-disc release titled “Ralph Shapey: Radical Traditionalist,” from New World Records, an essential nonprofit label devoted to American music. This recording is evidence of a promise fulfilled. In 2003 CRI (Composers Recordings Inc.), a scrappy nonprofit label that maintained the widest-ranging catalog of contemporary music, went out of business after 48 years. This was a particular blow to the discography of American composers because CRI kept all releases in its catalog available, no matter the sales. New World Records came to the rescue, pledging to digitize the master tapes of the complete CRI catalog and to make every recording available as a burned-to-order CD, complete with the original liner notes and cover art. New World also promised to reissue selected recordings and compilations. The Shapey album is one. The program includes performances of five major works originally recorded and released by CRI, mostly in the 1970s and ’80s. There are two daunting piano pieces: 21 Variations (1978), performed by Wanda Maximilien; and “Fromm Variations”(1966; 1972-73), a sprawling 52-minute work consisting of 31 variations on a chorale theme, performed by Robert Black. Also included are the compact, intense 12-minute String Quartet No. 6 and the 35-minute, traditionally structured String Quartet No. 7, performed by quartets drawn from the contemporary chamber ensemble of the University of Chicago that Shapey established when he joined the faculty in 1964. His work with this adventurous ensemble gave him a secure home base. Having conducted student ensembles since he was 17, he was a skilled conductor and an inspiring teacher. What comes through in this recent trove of recordings is that for all the gritty complexity of Shapey’s works, this authentic music has arresting qualities, including pugnacious rhythmic vitality and vibrant humor. Yes, like many curmudgeons, Shapey had a self-deprecating sense of humor, which came through in a 1996 interview with The New York Times when he turned 75. “Now it’s official: I’m an old fish, as they say in Yiddish,” he said, laughing heartily. Shapey described himself as structurally a classicist, emotionally a romanticist and harmonically a modernist. His musical language came from a free adaptation of the 12-tone technique that he called “the mother lode,” in which aggregates of pitches around each note in his rows allowed him to shift from chord to chord through common tones, lending his harmony a grounded quality. In any case, during a good performance of a Shapey work, few listeners will fret about tone rows. The music is too ecstatic, thorny and elemental for that. The “Fromm Variations,” for example, abound in steely harmonies, jagged lines and leaping chords. The sheer size of the 52-minute work is overwhelming and impractical, which makes Mr. Black’s commanding performance the more impressive. But for all the unremittingly intensity and outbursts of aggressively dissonant cluster chords, there are stretches where the pace slackens and the music turns quizzical and tender. The 21 Variations for Piano, at nearly 30 minutes, is more approachable. The initial theme is like some wild and jerky dance. Many of the variations hover on the divide between impishness and intimidation. Again there are those passages of ruminative, elegiac writing, all qualities compellingly conveyed in Ms. Maximilien’s performance. Here is a work that could be a knockout among the right companion pieces on a recital program. On the Centaur recording Ms. Cuckson gives volatile and lustrous accounts of three works for solo violin. I especially enjoy the two duos: “Five for Violin and Piano (1960) and “Millennium Designs” (2000), which she and Mr. McMillen play with complete command and infectious enthusiasm. You cannot hear the bumptious little Scherzo from “Five for Violin and Piano” and not fall under the sway of Shapey’s sly humor. Though Shapey faced much resistance, he had his share of acclaim. In 1982 he became one of the first composers to win a prestigious MacArthur Foundation award. He had never heard of the prize, the so-called genius award, and was suspicious when a foundation official called him with the news that he had just won more than $400,000. As he explained in that 1996 Times interview, he wanted to know what he would have to do to collect the award. Write a piece? Quit his teaching job? “I got impatient and said: ‘Let’s quit this nonsense. Which one of my friends or enemies put you up to this?’ ” He hung up. The next day he received an official letter with confirmation of the award. With that grant in hand, Shapey was able to complete a series of large-scale works in the next few years, including an unconventional Concerto for Cello, Piano and Strings — 40 strings to be exact. Written for his loyal colleagues Mr. Krosnick and Mr. Kalish, the concerto is another visionary, unabashedly complex Shapey score.

and we're still up. :eye:

December 26, 2007 'Hollywood Sound' Composer Gets His Due By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 4:31 p.m. ET VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart ... Korngold? Countless millions have at least heard of the classical masters associated with Vienna. Not only the titanic trio of Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms viewed the city at some point as their musical home. So did Anton Bruckner, Joseph Haydn, Gustav Mahler and Franz Schubert. But a half century after his death, mention of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, another great musical son of Vienna, often draws blank stares here and elsewhere -- despite his legacy as the founder of the ''Hollywood Sound.'' But in a small way, this year has been Korngold's moment in a Vienna that is still recovering from the marathon musical and marketing excesses of the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth in 2006. The city's Jewish Museum is devoting a major exhibition to the man whose classical career fell victim to a triple whammy -- a domineering music critic father, the advent of atonal music, and finally, the rise of Hitler that perpetuated his self-exile to the U.S. A sampling of his famed film scores was performed for the first time last month in one of the Austrian capital's prestigious concert halls. And a film retrospective was dedicated to the Vienna's musical ''Wunderkind'' of the early 20th century who, neglected at home, morphed into the creator of the Hollywood soundtracks that continue to set the standard. It's a tribute that may be 50 years late: Only a handful of his classical works remain popular. But Korngold has established a huge musical niche -- and won two Oscars -- through nine works for film. They include genre-creating swashbucklers for Warner Brothers like ''Captain Blood'' (1935) and ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' (1938), in the lush operatic style that initially made his name. Korngold himself saw no difference between his classical and screen writing, declaring: ''Even if I wanted to, I could not write music below my own standards.'' He called his screen music ''operas without singing,'' and experts consider his film compositions on par with much the world of ''serious music'' has to offer. ''Like Mozart, he wrote,'' says composer and arranger John Mauceri. ''It didn't matter whether he wrote a concert, an opera, or light entertainment, he wrote the highest quality music.'' His symphonic creations for the screen -- and those of successors following in his footsteps -- have been enjoyed by millions more attuned to melodies from ''Lord of the Rings' than Ludwig van's ''Fifth.'' And some of Hollywood's greatest screenwriters freely acknowledge the debt their industry owes the man who, while lionized by the movie moguls, suffered from the perception that his music was not taken seriously in Vienna. ''Anyone who works with music and film feels part of this historical line -- the golden years of what became known as the 'Hollywood Sound,''' said Howard Shore, whose credits include scoring Tolkien's ''Ring.'' Even now, ''the compositional ideas'' of writing music for film derive from Korngold and his contemporaries, the Oscar and Grammy winner told The Associated Press. Mauceri, founder of Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and chancellor of the North Carolina School of the Arts, calls Korngold's musical legacy ''so important they tend to dominate our conversation'' about the history of music in cinema. ''Millions of people ... heard his music through the medium of film,'' said Mauceri, who conducted the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna in a Nov. 29 death-day retrospective of Korngold works and contemporary film music at the city's art deco Konzerthaus. ''When you hear 'Harry Potter,' and 'Star Wars' -- that's something Vienna can be proud of,'' he said. And yet Korngold viewed his legacy as a tragic mistake -- the result of a promising ''classical'' career gone awry. Recognized by age 10 as a musical prodigy, Korngold logged his share of early operatic and symphonic successes. As one of the last proponents of sweeping German romanticism, he was at one point the most performed German-speaking composer of his era. By the time he was in his 30s, his works were played by some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, and his most popular opera, ''Die Tote Stadt,'' was staged by dozens of major houses, including the Met in New York. But with the rise of Arnold Schoenberg and other masters of atonality, detractors increasingly found his lush and sweeping melodies out of date. Adding to his woes were the victims of his father, Julius, one of Europe's most influential music critics of the day. Soloists and conductors savaged by Julius took their revenge on Erich, refusing to perform his works. Sensitive and withdrawn, the younger Korngold retreated into the world of operetta, focusing on arrangements and adaptations that would soon be reflected in his Hollywood era. His first trip to Hollywood was in 1934, to work with Max Reinhardt on the film classic ''A Midsummer Night's Dream.'' Hitler annexed Austria four years later while Korngold was visiting the U.S. As a Jew, Korngold was unable to return home. But the composer steeped in Old World traditions never stopped yearning for his musical and emotional roots -- and for the city and continent that rejected him well past the Hitler era. Still, Mauceri feels Vienna has made amends. ''There is a willingness (there) to accept that he is part of Vienna's culture,'' he said. ''What is significant is that 50 years after his death, Vienna is ready to reconsider his assessment of him.''

Except much less interesting. Much.

same here.

Seems like there is a new version of String Quartet (1979) on Hat. There are already two previous versions out, Naxos and Koch.

Yeah, WBGO & WFUV wouldn't be much of a loss.

I originally bought this for the Stravinsky, a two piano version of Agon, but now I'm getting into de Staat by Louis Andriessen. He always seemed to be a fusion of Stravinsky and pulse oriented minimalism like Steve Reich. His Wiki seems to think so too: I don't know about the big band music reference...I don't hear it. I'm looking forward to checking out more by Andriessen sometime. I know I've heard his music before...at Bang on a Can, at Princeton U. (I seem to remember he was a visiting composer there a while back). Hmm...comments anybody?

American.

OK I'll call the Times and tell them to delete the story Thanks. It's a slow news week, they'll run anything. Look...another article about Joseph Biden.

There's also a few radical art pirates broadcasting in that neighborhood. Not exactly news...

Maybe they have too many net listeners. Again.

:eye:

I was listening to that in the car. Interesting enough...last night I was listening to some fine orgone music.

My dream woman...choking chicken. We have so much in common.

quality!

Really?

December 25, 2007 Martha Built Nativity Scene in Prison By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 7:13 p.m. ET CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- The Christmas season brought Martha Stewart one fond memory of her stay in a West Virginia prison. On the Christmas Day episode of her television show, Stewart showed off ornate clay forms of the baby Jesus, Joseph, Mary, three camels and others she sculpted at a pottery class at the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, W.Va. ''Even though every inmate was only allowed to do one a month, and I was only there for five months, I begged because I said I was an expert potter -- ceramicist actually -- and could I please make the entire nativity scene,'' she said. Her creations were all fired and glazed at the prison. She completed the effect with tiny artificial palm trees imported from Germany by a New Jersey distributor. Stewart was imprisoned in 2005 for lying about her sale of ImClone stock. Isn't that special...

Height 5' 3" (1.60 m) hmm...

I love this one. I thought I ran out of sexy photos, but Aloc submitted this one: Twang! I wonder how tall she is...

I happen to like her. I want her to make me dinner and pay my bills long time.

Just what we need, Rachael Ray's horoscope!