John Talbott's Paris

I'd like to say Good Night to my friend Claudio Abbado.

Over the the years, many friends of mine have died - in their twenties of weird melanomas, in their thirties of weird infections and injuries, in their forties of heart attacks, and now that my cohort is really dying off - of everything in every organ.

Over the years I've written about the deaths (I really dislike words like passing) of people who have meant a lot to me - some whom I knew well - like Johnnie Apple (RW Apple Jr.), John Updike and Ted Kennedy but some of whom I've never met, like Sydney Pollack.

Well, I watch no TV; well actually I watch a lot of TV but it's Mezzo and Brava, and over the years I've grown to appreciate Claudio Abbado, especially when he conducted choral works.  He looked a bit tired, sweaty and most recently really sick (with a bad disease), but he was a trooper and he kept on creating groups and conducting.

But he also did something I rarely see conductors do - after a piece is over, he not only recognizes the players and the audience in front - he looks up at the folks in the Family Circle/5th tier/whatever.  

That's class - M. Abbado, I miss you already, rest in peace.  Have a good sleep.  Good night.  You deserve it.

Moving Music in Aspen: Stephen Kim, Christopher Richardson and Orli Shaham.

No music critic I, but since I express myself about art a lot, why not sound?

We've been coming to the Aspen Music Festival for about 10 years and we have some very memorable experiences; but putting aside the great Mahler, Beethoven and Brahms and artists we've heard, this week was special.

Last night, Stephen Kim, 14, blew a sophistocated auditorium away with his rendering of the Sarasate Faust Fantasy; then Christopher Richardson, 11 years old, threw caution to the winds with his playing of the Prokofief Piano Sonato #4 - wow, what are these Asian kids getting in California?

Then tonight, Orli Shaham, yah, I know, her bro is Gil, whom we've heard at lot at Shriver Hall and the Meyerhoff - so she got an E-ZPass in, right?, but no, she earned her way in thru Horace Mann, Columbia and Julliard - played Musorgsky's [sic] Pictures at an Exhibition. 

Now, disclosure: I hate Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, or at least I have hated every rendition I've ever heard, in the concert hall, on the radio or on the iPod.  But boy, was this special; clear, energetic and dynamic (in the sense that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary meant - that is, relating to physical force or energy).

AMFS - you're doing something right, keep it up!

9 Musical weekends at the 104 Cultural Center

 
Nine weekends this year, Radio France is holding concerts in rooms 200 and 400 at 104 for children and adults, in live and filmed performances.  Colette's cousin, who actually looks at and reads signs, said to us as we sat down to eat at Les Grandes Tables - did we know there was one this afternoon.

It consisted of three films - of Guilels playing Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev from 1959, Kagan, Gutman and Richter playing Tchaikovsky from Moscow in 1986 and the Swedish Radio Orchestra playing the Firebird in 1970 under Sergiu Celibidache.  Except for some tininess in the violin in the middle piece, the sound was good and the images, while reflective of the limited cameras used in these eras, was evocative.

MacBeth at the Opera Bastille: maybe a first for both of us!

 

This is the first musical review I’ve done, so go easy folks (the program above is blurred so I don't get copyright suits).

After lunch today, I ambled, well, walked fast, over to the Opera Bastille where I knew Macbeth, one on my faves, was playing. I knew when it began and I thought that if I was done my lunch in proper time without being rude, I’d get there in time. Well, I did, sort of.

I was aiming for the 5 € standing room sold 15 minutes before (where, at the old 39th St. Met, I’d met Colette, 50 years ago (holy cow, I gotta come up with a golden idea soon, oh that’s easy, a guy dropped a nice gold ring on the sidewalk today) but they had sold out, so I was directed (very nicely) to the box office aka the Group W bench, where 10 folk were in line and no one was moving; a tux’d guy comes up to me and asks, “are you a senior perhaps?”; very civilized, well, I guess, over here; jump the line (love it when I jump the line on the premier line-jumpers on the globe) – at this point even my youngest grandchild starts to drift away – get to the point G-pa.

Ok so I paid 20 € more than I expected to but was in the 12th row center besides a gorgeous lady with a short dress. In any case, I’d read that it was done in contemporary dress, etc., and sometimes I think this works, Seller’s in particular, seems to be able to do opera a la moderne (well, he’s a Haavahd guy), but it’s not assured, as the Metro announcements tell you. So I was primed to walk out if I hated the production.

The obligatory announcement was made, M. Blah is indisposed - Oh no – but Madame Blech will substitute – Ahhhh. Well she was a real fatty, but the rest of the cast does Pilates, eats well and is dressed like Scots dudes and dudesses today do; ties, suits, elegant dresses - cool.

The singing was pretty good, not Leopoldine Rysanek and Leonard Warenoff, circa 1959, but OK. But, but, but, the changes of scenes (Google-Earth-type images), sets (futuristic blocky) and the finale – when bombs burst in air and mortars came through the scenery – was every 11 year old boy’s dream.

Worth the price of admission and the distraction of the lady’s thighs.

Was there nothing wrong? Well, the conductor, one Teodor Currentzis, hails from Novossibirsk, Siberia, whose company is the co-producer and it’s gotta be really cold and out of touch up there because his garb and hair were stuck in Peter Serkin 1960-land. And, he learned conducting from watching tapes of Louis Bernstein and Roberto Remigio Benigni.

Go? Yes, but if you want to really get a cheap high, sneak in 15 minutes from the end just to see the walls come tumbling down.

Romania - Some culture (Art, Music, Gardens, Buildings, etc.)

We were privileged to experience a great deal in our brief week in Romania and I wanted to communicate some of the high and low lights.

   

For me the highest light was the opening of the season of the Bucharest Symphony at the dazzling Atheneum playing Mahler's 3rd with two choruses; the place (seating 900) is a real jewelbox for something so fine.

 

Second was the Museum of Fine Arts - the European section - with its impressive collection containing El Greco, Tintoretto, Brueghel, Rubens and Rembrandt, not to mention a sizeable collection of impressionists and post-impressionists.  I was not impressed with the Bohemian crystal exhibition advertised above, however.

   

My morning joggies/runnies/limpies were in a lovely park with its inevitable packs of abandoned feral dogs.

 

Unfortunately the architecture is starky, greyly Stalinist for the most part and the Palace of the Parliament,

   

where I had to speak, is Ceauşescu's revenge, the second largest building the the world and a monster.