Festival Preview: Mostly Mozart 2015

Lincoln Center's longest-running festival event returns for its 49th season.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This year's Mostly Mozart Festival features optically enhanced Mozart. 
Either that or he's trying to look cool.
Image by StrangeStore

Before there was the Lincoln Center Festival, Midsummer Night's Swing or Lincoln Center Out of Doors, there was Mostly Mozart. This venerable celebration of all things classical, medium-sized and small returns to the Upper West Side for a month starting in the last week of July and continuing through the first three weeks of August. This year's schedule includes the New York premiere of George Benjamin's opera Written on Skin and appearances from piano luminaries like Pierre Laurent-Aimard, Jeremy Denk and Emanuel Ax, baritone Matthias Goerne and cellist Sol Gabetta in her Festival debut.

D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'OHHHHH!

The Ten Best Simpsons Classical/Opera Moments
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Scratchy (left) stalks Itchy in a scene from Roger Meyers' cartoon classic Scratchtasia.
Original image from The Simpsons episode Itchy and Scratchy Land © 1994 Fox/Gracie Films

I'm in the middle of two marathons right now. One is the 2014 Superconductor Metropolitan Opera Preview, our annual look at all the opera productions that the Met is mounting next season. As I'm writing, my efforts have been accompanied by The Simpsons Every Episode Marathon. So off the top of my head, here are the greatest "serious music" moments in the show's 552 episodes. Chronological order. (I had to look up the dates--my memory is good, it's not that good.)

Carnegie Hall Strike Ends

Historic venue open for business as usual.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A mysterious force removed the rat (seen previously) from the Carnegie Hall stage.
Photo provided by Carnegie Hall. Laughably crude photoshop by the author.

In an announcement from Carnegie Hall today, stagehands at New York City's legendary classical concert venue have voted to accept a two-year contract, putting an end to a two-day strike. This was the first strike in the long history of Carnegie Hall.

Coiled Anticipation: Spring For Music 2012

The festival returns to Carnegie Hall for its second season.
by Paul Pelkonen

Spring for Music. This is not the logo or anything.

Starting Monday night, Carnegie Hall opens its venerated doors to the Spring For Music Festival, six concerts with lesser-known North American orchestras playing a combination of 20th and 21st-century repertory from deep corners of the repertory. 

Sounds exciting?

Did we mention that all tickets for these concerts are dirt cheap at $25?.

New York Philharmonic Avoids Strike

Orchestra, union sign two-year labor deal.

Filling the seats: the New York Philharmonic poses in Avery Fisher Hall.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2011 The New York Philharmonic.

Well, that was close.

The New York Philharmonic narrowly avoided a strike this weekend.

The orchestra, which embarks today on a three-week European tour, almost got on the picket line instead of the airplane. The musicians, who have played all of this season's concerts without a new contract in place, were prepared to strike if a deal didn't get done.

In late-breaking news on Saturday night, the orchestra told Daniel J. Wakin of the New York Times that they had signed a new two-year contract, maintaining their health benefits and giving players a small salary increase in 2014. There is also a hard cap on pension benefits.

Mr. Wakin first reported the news on Twitter, and then in a Times article compiled by himself and Adam W. Kepler. That article is the source of this story.

Mr. Wakin's article commented that this deal was "short, by industry standards."


The orchestra and its musicians had been at loggerheads over the company's pension fund. According to Mr. Wakin's report, management had taken its proposals for "drastic" health insurance cuts and "radical" benefit reductions off the table. Both sides agreed to reexamine benefit issues in 2014.

In signing a deal, orchestra and musicians have avoided the kind of ugly situation that nearly scuppered the 2012 seasons of the New York City Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The City Opera players settled for an extension of their health care benefits with a severe cut in their performance fees. In Philadelphia, that venerable orchestra filed for bankruptcy before hammering out a deal with their musicians.

Tino Gagliardi, a representative for Musicians Local 802, told the Times that management backed down from a scheme to change players' pensions from "defined benefit" to one where the funds would be supported by contributions from the players' paychecks.

Concert Review: An Afiara to Remember

Elegant Schubert and Beethoven in Murray Hill.

The Afiara Quartet: (l.-r.) Yuri Cho, violin; Adrian Fung, cello;
Valerie Li, violin and David Samuel, viola.

On Thursday night, the Montréal Chamber Music Festival offered an intimate evening of intricate works by Beethoven and Schubert. The concert was held at the WMP Concert Hall, an unlikely jewel box recital hall tucked behind a storefront on East 28th St.

With its vintage furniture, hanging chandelier and antique mirrors on the wall, the WMP Hall is an urban anachronism, looking more like a small conservatory chamber in the Schonbrunn or Esterhazy than what it is, a New York concert hall slipped into a neighborhood where music lovers rarely tread.

The performances, by cellist Denis Brott and the Afiara String Quartet, were equally elegant. The concert opened with Beethoven's A Major Sonata for Cello and Piano, with Mr. Brott accompanied by pianist Kevin Loucks. The A Major Sonata is also notable for its second movement, which has the rhythmic seeds of the famous Scherzo from the Ninth Symphony.

The cello sonatas are among Beethoven's least appreciated chamber works, charming examples of his genius. Here, this music was played with warm tones from Mr. Brott's cello and the house Bösendorfer, intertwining to make two instruments resound like an orchestra in the tiny space. 

Mr. Brott put the composition in context by reading a translation of the famous "Immortal Beloved" letter between movements, giving an emotional underpinning to the eloquent music. But the real beauty came in his passionate bowing, playing Beethoven's rhythm-driven melodies with a sure touch. With playing like this, the letter, though historically interesting, proved superfluous. 

Without taking an interval, the piano was moved back and Mr. Brott was joined by the Afiara String Quartet to play Schubert's String Quintet in C Major. With an unusual configuration (the second 'cello replaces the more traditional viola, this expansive, symphonic quintet derives much of its power from the interlocking cello counterpoint that plays throughout its four movements.

With Mr. Brott taking the second cello part, the Afiara Quartet forged ahead with a bold interpretation that made the most of Schubert's melodies without sacrificing energy and drive. From the opening movement with its three traded-off main themes, the players' interaction in the small space showed both their experience playing together and joy in this glorious music.

The second movement evokes the same Viennese lyricism as Beethoven's Scene by the Brook in the Pastorale Symphony. It was played tenderly and with delicate care. The third featured potent rhythms, played with taut precision. The finale brought the performance to a stirring conclusion, a whirling dance of melody with a tinge of Hungarian folksiness that looks forward to Brahms.

Rare Orchestra Announces Rare U.S. Tour

Jean Sibelius, surprised as anyone else
 that they've found the score of his Eighth Symphony.

Inspired by Daniel J. Wakin's excellent article in the New York Times on questionable orchestras and their planned tours of North America, Superconductor is pleased to announce its sponsorship of the first North American tour by the world-famous Olematon Akatemia Sinfoniaorkestri.

The group will be touring under the direction of its current music director, Lupää Johtaja. Mr. Johtaja has worked with the 120-piece touring ensemble since 1999, and originally joined the orchestra as a second triangle player.

The company's summer repertory includes Bruckner's Concerto for Two Wagner Tubas and String Orchestra, The Asteroids, a tone poem by Gustav Holst, Franz Liszt's Fourth Piano Concerto for the Left Pinkie and the Richard Strauss waltz Schlagobers. The orchestra will also be playing an abbreviated version of John Cage's 4'33" as its nightly encore.

Based in the world-class Kusta Lumi Concert Hall, newly built on the outskirts of Kemijärvi, Finland, this  ensemble is particularly revered for its performance of the recently discovered Eighth Symphony of Finnish national composer Jean Sibelius. The score, long thought destroyed, was found underneath a FinnBot pinball machine in a public house on the outskirts of Rovaniemi. A recording is forthcoming on Teldec Records.

Founded on February 30, 1973, the Olematon Akatemia Sinfoniaorkestri is an internationally accredited ensemble, which spent most of the 1970s and '80s on goodwill tours of the eastern end of the former Soviet bloc. Their first music director was the much-loved Sonni "Paska" Valehtelija. In addition to his chamber arrangement of Arnold Schoenberg's cantata Gurre-Lieder, Mr. Valehtelija was known for conducting concert versions of rare operas, including Richard Wagner's Wieland der Schmied, Giuseppe Verdi's Re Lear and Leos Janacek's The Cunning Little Agent, a dark comedy which is the flip side to the composer's The Makropolous Case.

Tour stops include Bodie, CA, Berlin, NV, Medicine Mound, TX, and Centralia, PA before returning to Europe to play a summer festival in Belchite, Spain. More information about this orchestra can be found at this site.

Just You Wait, Henry Lee Higginson

Spring is officially here. Photo © Boston Pops/Boston Symphony Orchestra

An enjoyable video of the annual ritual: converting Boston's venerable Symphony Hall into 'cabaret' seating for the Boston Pops. So THAT'S where they hide the leather-backed seats....

Gustav Mahler...on The Simpsons?

Homer J. Simpson, appearing soon in the Metropolitan Opera's new La Traviata.
From the 2010 episode To Surveil With Love. © 2010 Gracie Films/20th Century Fox.

So this morning I'm on Hulu, catching up on this week's new Simpsons episode, The Scorpion's Tale, where Lisa accidentally creates a new "happy pill" from the extract of a desert flower. About 12 minutes into the episode, there's a montage with all of Springfields' septue- and octogenarians romping about happily. The soundtrack: Mahler's First Symphony, first movement. Conductor and orchestra unknown.

Classical music has long played an important role in the adventures of America's favorite family. The very first episode, "Bart the Genius", featured Marge taking her family to the opera. They saw Carmen. Unaccountably, the opera was advertised asbeing sung in Russian, although the singing was in French. After Bart gave his rendition of "Toreador-o, don't spit on the floor", they left the opera house and went for hamburgers.

In Season 2 (Marge vs. Itchy and Scratchy), Bart's mother lauches a successful crusade against cartoon violence. This results in the children of Springfield going out and playing in the sunshine to the bucolic strains of Beethoven's "Pastorale" Symphony, again the first movement.

Season 15's Margical History Tour featured an entire sketch based on the play and movie Amadeus. Bart was Mozart. Lisa, a jealous, angry Salieri who decides to sabotage the first performance of Bart's opera, The Musical Fruit. The episode also featured school bully Nelson Muntz as a hopeful young composer named Beethoven:

Nelson Muntz as Beethoven in a scene from Margical History Tour. © 2004 Gracie Films/FOX.

Seasons 16's The Seven-Beer Snitch featured the opening of a brand new concert hall in Springfield, designed by architect Frank Gehry. The concert hall closed quickly after the first performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (the audience left after the opening "Dah-dah-dah-DUM") and became a prison.

Bart Simpson as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in a scene from the Mozart and Salieri
segment of Margical History Tour. © 2004 Gracie Films/20th Century Fox.

Marge Gamer (Season 18) featured Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Placìdo Domingo showed up in The Homer of Seville, (Season 19) gave Homer some career tips on singing opera, and then snapped him with a wet towel. And, the highly amusing Da Vinci Code spoof Gone Maggie Gone (Season 20) featured a choir of nuns essaying the opening bars of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

Although the show's episodes average 20 minutes in length, (shorter than the opening movements of most Bruckner symphonies!) it is encouraging to see that the writers on America's longest-running situation comedy keep the classical music flag flying. And who knows? Some kid watching Our Favorite Family might get into classical music and some day start a blog and call it...oh, I don't know...Ultraconductor?
...Megaconductor?
...Hyperconductor?!

Here's some music:

The Los Angeles Philharmonic plays Mahler's Symphony No. 1 "Titan". Gustavo Dudamel conducting. © 2010 Universal Music Group