CGF Newsletter 26: Vienna Blood
An orchestra faces the axe, Puts puts out a new album, Cincy's upcoming season
Name That Tune
This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Kevin. Here’s your hint: This composer’s teachers at the Paris Conservatoire included Philippe Gaubert, Vincent d'Indy, Georges Caussade, and Paul Vidal. No Googling!
As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing.
Last Week’s Results
CGF Newsletter 25
Josef Suk, Scherzo Fantastique
Listener Christopher (about whom more below) hit the nail on the head, having the advantage of having played it in his college orchestra.
Listener Laurie got there via the hint. Naturally, she also brought up the father/son-in-law connection between Liszt and Wagner, which was the obvious misdirect. Joey bandwaggoned, to his benefit, but mentioned Khatchatourian as a stylistic referent (pointing out that the clip was probably from a slightly earlier period than Khatch — he was right; the piece is from 1903.)
I’ll finish by saying that I think this is a good piece that happens to have a FABULOUS dark waltz theme that almost elevates the rest of the material, but not quite.
Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!
Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.
NEWS!
The Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra is in trouble (with a capital T!) The orchestra has existed since 1969 making it the youngest of Vienna’s three state-sponsored professional orchestras, which is no doubt why the Nehammer government has identified it as an extravagance ripe for cost-cutting.
On the podcast, we often discussed the pros and cons of government funding for professional orchestras. Well, here’s the con in action: when the government wants to tighten its purse strings, orchestras are an obvious place to look, and it’s easy to vilify them along elitist lines.
My question in all of this is: if worse comes to worst, would it be possible for the orchestra to incorporate, hire a development department, and try to fundraise using the North American model? Could that even work given the context of the city of Vienna?
The principal conductors of the region’s other radio orchestras have weighed in with a statement of support. You can sign a petition if you’re also inclined to engage in advocacy on behalf of musical Austrian public servants.
I’ll just mention that the current music director of the Vienna Radio Symphony is none other than that Tár-hating woman, conductor, and lesbian Marin Alsop. I try to avoid talking too much about Tár, but it’s been hard to avoid recently because it’s finally coming out in Europe and we’re getting closer to the Oscars in the US. So for those who are interested, there was this Guardian article about orchestral politics as represented in the film and this interview with John Mauceri.
Codetta: Anna Netrebko, who seemed to be making a comeback after initial support for Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, was just dropped from a concert by the Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra. I don’t think it’s hard to see why that particular institution would be wary of hosting a favorite of Vladimir Putin.
Album Review (by request!)
Listener (formerly Listener-Statistician) Christopher has written in with a request for my hot takes about some recent albums. I live to serve, so here’s some thoughts on the first item he listed.
Kevin Puts: Marimba Concerto, The City, Oboe Concerto
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Alsop
Spotify
Alas, not my cup of tea. The marimba concerto got off to a bad start as far as I was concerned, being stuffed to the brim with unexamined 90s-era clichés. The second and third movements were a bit more to my liking, but this is not music that I would choose to listen to, in spite of the fact that everyone seems to think that I’m just a shill for anything in the contemporary music space that happens to be tonal!
“The City” is a 22-minute long tone poem. My advice? Check out Jennifer Higdon’s Skyline. It’s got a somewhat similar vibe, but it’s more interesting and mercifully shorter.
The oboe concerto, titled “Moonlight” was the work on this album that left me with the most positive impression. It begins with about 10 seconds of the most blatant Phil Glass ripoff music you could possibly imagine, but then, to Puts’ credit, he builds on this allusionist music, and takes it in a very non-Glassy direction. He does some alternate fingering timbral shift stuff, but if that’s what you’re into, I’d listen to what is far and away the most interesting concertante work for oboe written in the past decade, Viet Cuong’s Extra(ordinarily) Fancy.
I know I gave Kevin Puts’ The Hours a review that could have been read as positive, but I was much more able to accept his music when it was the soundtrack to a bunch of stage action. To me, it doesn’t add up to a satisfying experience on its own.
As far as I can tell, the performances are uniformly excellent.
Thank you to Listener Christopher for suggesting these album reviews; there’s certainly more to come! Christopher, I hope this one wasn’t too disappointing, since I’m presuming you made these suggestions because you enjoyed these albums. Just remember, if it makes you happy, that’s all that matters!
Season Previews
First off, an update to my review from last week about the Met’s upcoming season. Listener Kevin pointed out that if you go deeper into the bowels of the Met website, they flesh out the season in greater detail, including one-off opera performances, concerts, and other special events. The upshot is that the season isn’t quite so tilted towards the contemporary as I had thought. But I’d say it’s even more interesting that the Met clearly wants the public to perceive that they are contemporary forward.
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra 2023–2024
https://www.cincinnatisymphony.org/tickets-and-events/season-at-a-glance/2324-season/
First of all, can I just say: I never thought we’d live to see a day when orchestras laid out on their websites, in a clear, legible, easily-accessible fashion, all the music they intended to perform on the next season. Heaven is indeed a place on earth.
This particular CSO is an organization I know well, since I was employed by them for four years as a member of their conducting staff. That’s a big part of the reason I chose to weigh in on their programming, especially since this is the final season of their outgoing music director, my former boss, Louis Langrée.
So what are my criteria when evaluating an orchestra season? Two main things come to mind:
A balance of classics, lesser-known historical works, and contemporary music. Crucially, I am looking for interesting concert design that presents these works in intelligent, provocative, satisfying ways. All too often, artistic administrators just check off boxes as regards to repertoire variety, putting any old thing with any other old thing.
Identity, some sense that this orchestra is rooted in a time, a place, and a community, such that the music performed wouldn’t quite hit the same if it were performed anywhere else.Too often these days, orchestral programmers copy each other, preferring flavors of the moment to the spécialités de la maison.
From my time there, I can tell you a few things about the Cincinnati Symphony’s identity that come to mind. For one, there’s a major Pops tradition, and that is very much reflected in this season announcement, almost to a fault. On the classical side of things, the orchestra has traditionally carried a dark, rich sound, but they can lighten up when necessary. They remind me of a lot of German orchestras. I always thought it was a fantastic Schumann orchestra.
Cincinnati sits at the nexus of the midwest and the south. It’s a hella normie place, but the orchestra is genuinely important in the history of classical music. In particular, the May Festival, a 5-concert choral-orchestral series that takes place at the end of the season, is one of the oldest classical institutions in the country, and very much reflects the southern German roots of the original European settlers of the region.
I like a lot of the classical concerts: you’ve got a good modernist season opener followed by a nice all-American program in October. Then things get a bit dicier. Bacewicz, Mozart (Eine Kleine!) and Wagner’s Ring Without Words? Hard to see that as not box-checking.
We’ve got an all-Brahms concert and an all-Mozart concert, which strike me as huge whiffs, as much as I love those composers. Actually, there’s two all-Brahms concerts, since the German Requiem is being presented alone. I’m not going to argue with that one.
A concert performance of Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet is definitely something you will not see elsewhere, and probably for good reason. (This is a co-production with Louis’ other gig, the Opéra comique in Paris.) I can’t blame Louis for Matthias Pintscher conducting Olivier Messaien’s Des canyons aux étoiles though, which, when I heard it in Seattle this past spring, proved to be among the more stultifying experiences of my life.
As for contemporary composers, I’m less impressed, because I know for a fact that these are just the “it” composers rather than having any special connection to the CSO. Daniel Bjarnason, Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, Anthony Davis. Samy Moussa is a more interesting figure as is Jonathan Bailey Holland (whom I know to have a connection to the orchestra.)
A composer who definitely has a connection to the orchestra is Bryce Dessner, who gets two concerts devoted to his music. I have never understood why the CSO artistic team went all in on Dessner. I guess a lot of people like his band, The National, but he has not made the transition from the band stand to the concert stage with any particular flair or success (unlike his obvious role model, Johnny Greenwood.)
The season includes some big works that I just happen to hate (Heldenleben, Nielsen 4) but I can’t really hold it against them I suppose.
Overall, I guess I’d give this season a B-. There’s a lot of great music, and there are a handful of really good concerts. To me what it is missing almost entirely is the inclusion of lesser-known historical works (with Hamlet being the one major exception.) I would really like to see more interesting contemporary music that reflects the attitudes and tastes of the public and is well-paired with the classics.
Classical Mixtape
Martín Palmeri, Misa a Buenos Aires (Misatango)
Someone in my chorus just suggested to me that we should do this piece. I listened to it, and it’s great, so perhaps we will!
What I would give for a clear layout of the season like that Cincinnati website...
My C(hicago)SO has, I think, been making it worse each year to navigate and see what the whole season program is. I always have to reconstruct it myself so I can have it in an easily reviewable format to decide what I plan on seeing.
NTT: very Debussian touch to the piano, but we already knew it was French from the clue... Or did we? Lots of foreign students studied in Paris. De Falla and Enescu come immediately to mind.
Now, I'm going to really stretch my recollection of French music history here. From what I recall, D'Indy was teaching at the Conservatoire, but then he defected to the Schola cantorum so he could really dig into the boringness of Gregorian chant. So I think this composer would have to be part of a slightly older generation. (I may have that all wrong... I'll look it up after I finish commenting.)
I heard what may have been a few more modernist touches alla Scriabin.
I think my bucket is: Nadia Boulanger, Manuel de Falla, and Georges Enescu