Strangest choice of the Summer

Milton Babbit and Elliot Carter, two of the great figures of serialism, get together in Tanglewood to perform... Stravinsky? What am I missing here?

What REALLY Happened to Levine?

It's old news now that James Levine had season-ending rotator cuff surgery. The season in question, though, was only the Met season. As reported in the Glob:

Meanwhile, the managing director of the Boston Symphony, Mark Volpe, said Levine's doctor's expect the maestro to fully recovered in time for his next scheduled appearance with the BSO -- the July 7 opening of the Tanglewood season in Lenox.

(Though, let's put things in perspective: while I'm sure the people of New York are disappointed to miss out on Levine's conducting, at least his was less severe than than the most famous conducting accident in history.)

Last month I wrote about how Boston and New York were sharing Levine. But maybe someone in Boston doesn't want to share. Maybe it was specifically calculated to down Levine from the end of his share of the BSO winter season through the start of Tanglewood. Maybe it wasn't an accident.

We'll never know.

Even more NY-Boston Sharing

I admit it. I was a little disappointed to read that James Levine is sticking around the Met for at least two more years. I was thrilled when Levine was appointed the to replace Sieji Ozawa. Since then, I've been counting down the years until he left the Met behind and spend most of his time in Boston.

I realized from the beginning that for the sake of an artistic turn-around, we'd be compromising some loyalty. Levine wouldn't be wearing Red Sox jerseys to the Hatch Shell on July 4, but we could live with that. (Ozawa's first pitch was a pre-game highlight of a pretty entertaining baseball game last July.) But I was hoping he'd finish his duties in New York and focus more on the BSO.

It'll be some time, I guess, but watch out New York; Levine will be ours alone eventually.

(Yeah, I'm only kidding myself. I guess I'll just have to content myself by getting a ticket to next week's Gurrelieder.)

Water Music Version 2

Tonight, I finally made it to Symphony Hall for the first time this season, to hearTan Dun's Water Concerto (lead by Kurt Masur, with Christopher Lamb as the soloist). The piece was written in response to TakemitsuToru's death, and takes up one of his favorite subjects: water. Tan takes it one step farther, however, and promotes water from subject matter to featured soloist. The percussionist is given the following battery play with:

hemispherical water basins, a small bottle, a pair of water cup drums, water gong, four water drums (wooden bowls of different sizes floating upside down in basins of water), slinkyphone, long water tube with foam paddle, water shaker, four Agogo bells, sieve, vibraphone (prepared with coins taped to the bars), and waterphone, plus a double bass bow

In addition to some creative and specialty instruments (such as attaching a slinky to a sounding board, or using water escaping from a seive as percussion), Lamb was asked to take gongs and Agogo bells and dip them into water. This changes their pitch and resonance, making a deeper sound that oscillates. It also adds a visual element: you can't see vibrating air, but the water makes the disturbance visible.

The piece is a great example of Tan's theatricality. For example, the beginning intimates ritual. It opens in total darkness. One percussionist on either side of the orchestra begins playing a waterphone, as a third enters from the back of the hall. Slowly, pillars of light reveal clear ciruclar basins of water.

There's much more to it than lighting effects, though. The various improvised water instruments are quite entertaining to watch. I had the good fortune of being right on top of the action -- second balcony, first row, right over the stage. I think the most interesting instrument to watch were the water drums, consisting of wooden bowls overturned in the water. The result is a nice, mellow pitch that can be manipulated by lifting or lowering the bowl with one hand while striking it with the other. It provides a unique challenge: unlike other percussion instruments, the bowls move as they float around the basin. (Tympanists never need to worry about that problem.)

Lamb manipulated all the objects so well, and Tan wrote such an engaging score that I was disappointed the piece ended so quickly. It's a shame he didn't write a set of encores for various water percussion instruments.

The comic highlight of the night came from the oboist that saw it fit to accompany the emptying of the basins with the famous theme from Handel's Water Music.

Unfortunately, there aren't any commercial releases yet. However, it is part of volume 6 of the Kurt Masur box set released by the NY Philharmonic, with Lamb as the soloist.

The Water Concerto shared the program with Bruckner's 7th.

Maestro Levine

Scott Simon has a nice story on James Levine.

It's a matter of pride that in this Mozart year, the BSO is choosing to focus on Beethoven and Schoenberg. Also, anyone who can get Schoenberg, Carter, Varese, Wourinen, and the like on WCRB is truly a hero in the field.