Grande MOCA

A lovely day to go to the museum in Chicago.  That used to mean a few hours at the Art Institute; now it means an intense hour at the Museum of Contemporary Art up on E. Chicago.  Splendid today.  First, we joined; it turns out to be cheaper for me to get an out-of-town membership than to buy entries for Kirstin and Paula. Then 4 great pieces outside on and around the steps by Mark Handforth; sculptures reminiscent of Claes van Oldenburg, including a work based on Cockney slang, "Phone/Bone." Inside, a large exhibition of works by Mark Bradford, an African-American "painter" who creates his canvasses without paint, using paper which he sands and processes to resemble a painted surface.  A lot of the art is political in nature, which I don't so much care for, but so many of the works themselves are simply beautiful; his aesthetic is just fabulous, and the execution outstanding.

Then after seeing an absurd, self-important performance art/interactive installation based on deconstructing (literally) jeans to address the social issues around making them, we went up to the 4th floor for the exhibition drawn from the Museum's collection based around pieces by Joseph Cornell, whose work I know well from the Walker in Minneapolis.  So many great pieces by so many "old friends," LeWitt, George Segal, Judd, even Magritte, Duchamp, Marisol, Koons, Sherman, Rauschenberg, Warhol, many, many more.  Each room was devoted to a different aspect of Cornell's work.  Extremely satisfying.

You must see new art, see how people view the recent world.  Try not to criticize; accept what you see and open your mind to the possibilities of "expanded vision" (one of my definitions of art - "the manifestation of expanded vision").  Particularly the Americans over the past 60 years; this is something very important, the strongest period of American art, apart from the brilliance of Sargent, Homer and Whistler.  Dive head first into this, well worth it, the abstract expressionists, the conceptualists, the pops.  So much good stuff.

Back to Prokofiev; an incongruous but necessary segue.

MG

2nd movement, return of A section: The Fall of Berlin

The Fall of Berlin

The discussion of a concert with the EOS Orchestra (EOS – “Excellent Orchestral Sound”) began over two years ago, initiated by my student and now colleague, the wonderful violinist, Gao Çan.  Çan serves as artistic advisor and concertmaster of EOS, which functions essentially as the New World Symphony of China, a pre-professional orchestral training academy based at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

Not long after, during a week of masterclasses at CCoM, I was invited on a day’s notice to read Mahler 4 with the orchestra.  Delivered the next morning into the underbelly of the imposing National Centre for the Performing Arts (aka the “Egg”), I was escorted to a spacious basement rehearsal room.  We began promptly at 10 am; I was nervous, having not conducted the work for 5 years, but was delighted to learn that the principal flute had previously worked with me at the Chautauqua Festival in New York.  The principal cellist played in the China Philharmonic, the principal bassoon a guest from the Detroit Symphony.  A very satisfying experience; the orchestra played well and was quite attentive.  The reading was successful, or so I felt and so I was told.  Yet it would be quite a wait before I was invited to lead the EOS in concert, just last month.

Gao Çan, who for the longest time had assured me that such an invitation would be forthcoming, was finally proud and thrilled to deliver the news.  A concert,  in July 2011, at Beijing Concert Hall; a 5-star hotel, music of Shostakovich, plus a premiere of a new work commissioned by EOS.

Which music of Shostakovich - the ambitious 1^st Symphony, the popular 5^th Symphony, the playful 9^th, the mighty 10^th?  No, the 1^st Piano Concerto – an admittedly great, if not “deep,” piece – and “film music.”  I admit to having felt slightly crestfallen.  The specific titles remained unannounced till very late in the game, perhaps two weeks prior to my trip.  The new work, ink still wet on the Sibelius program, arrive barely a week before the departure, conveniently timed (by me) one week after a hernia operation.

Trepidation about the experience soon gave way to an intangible anticipation.  It turns out that Shostakovich wrote over 30 film scores, many of which are just now coming to light.  Some of the music is surprisingly well crafted, and Shostakovich was certainly motivated to execute them well – for all he knew, had Stalin not liked them, he could have ended up in the Gulag, or simply been disappeared and killed.

And so it was that I was sent scores to suites from “The Maxim Trilogy,” “The Gadfly” and “The Fall of Berlin.”  Each score had, among other incidental music, either a polka or gallop, or both, a battle scene in up-tempo 4/4 and a waltz (bring on the dancing bear!).  None of the scores were exceptionally difficult to play or to learn.  Many 4x4 phrases, simple tunes, basic accompaniments, classic Shostakovich gestures.  But his genius somehow managed to reveal itself in surprising touches of wit, pathos and sheer Soviet vigor.  A music-hall galop from “Maxim” features a soprano soloist singing an absurd ditty.  On the Aeroflot flight from Barcelona to Beijing through Moscow, I sat next to native Russian who agreed to explain the text to me; the singer is gleefully recounting the story of how she, a footballer, let the winning goal slip between her legs, causing her team to lose.  Shocking and delightful.

Arranging the works not in chronological order but in an order that made more musical sense was not difficult.  The obvious closer was “The Fall of Berlin,” a story of love, loss and triumph during World War II.  One discovers however that the thrilling final piece in the score, while effective, is in fact a choral/orchestral anthem celebrating the person of Joseph Stalin.  After the initial shock, I decided that, as  there would be neither chorus nor synopsis, there would be no harm done in closing the body of the program with it.

The new work on the first half, entitled “Pray,” was written by a very mild-mannered, innocent-enough looking young Chinese composer.  It turned out to be a bewildering and complex endeavor.  Gratuitously difficult and over-written, it nonetheless came together with some effect.  I was glad to see a new composition not overtly based in Chinese song tradition, although that model is by no means exhausted, witness the beautiful recent work of Zhou Long. 

Unlike my previous reading with EOS, our rehearsals for this concert did not really start on time, nor did I see the entire orchestra in one place at the same time until the next to last rehearsal.  Working with the ensemble, I dealt with typical problems of orchestral/string discipline; bow placement, speed, matching strokes, visual communication within the section, tuning and balancing wind and brass sonorities.  Our work was ultimately effective and I ended up enjoying most of the music.

Two days before the concert, I was handed a DVD, with the explanation, “Here is the movie.”  What movie, I asked.  They had neglected to inform me of this minor detail, that a disc of scenes from the movies themselves was to be projected on a screen above the orchestra at the concert.  A little chagrined at not having been informed, I just accepted it and sat down to watch the DVD that night in my hotel.  “The Gadfly” (1957) was a period piece set in Italy around the time of the Reformation, lots of fancy dress and a fiery protagonist with wild eyes, presumably railing against Church corruption and excess (the disc was silent, no dialogue) before being executed by a firing squad.  The Maxim set, taken from a trilogy of three movies dating from the ‘30’s, was a contemporary story of growing up in hard times.  Finally, scenes from “The Fall of Berlin” (1949) began with a pastoral love scene amidst fields of wheat (literally, though it could have been barley...).  Battle scenes were starkly staged; the obligatory waltz provided welcome visual relief.  The finale depicting the actual battle and Soviet victory in Berlin was exciting enough, until a silver plane alit, gleaming in the sunlight, the door opened and down the steps strode General Stalin himself, resplendent in a white formal uniform, bedecked with military honors and medals, saluting and greeting the troops, some of whom then broke out in Cossock dancing.  My jaw simply dropped.  So here we were, playing and showing an ode to one of history’s most notorious mass murders, now smiling at me in my hotel room.

Curious as to how this might play in Beijing, I asked a colleague, who assured me that it would be OK, that the Chinese respected a strong leader and that they were celebrating, after all, the 90^th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party in China.  One is not quite sure how to respond to such a statement; I let it be.

At the dress rehearsal, coordination between orchestra and film proved not to be a problem, as I had feared it would be.  I did remain haunted by this feeling of participating in a sacrilege.  Luckily, we had a built-in encore, another waltz from the 2^nd Jazz Suite for orchestra, which was used in Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, “Eyes Wide Shut.”  The sight of Tom Cruise traipsing around Venice did provide welcome relief, at least for this viewer.  The performance was quite successful, but a final note of incongruity sounded afterward, when I was greeted backstage by my colleague, Kurt Sassmanshaus, Starling Chair of Classical Violin at CCM.  The synchronicity of irony finally struck home: An American Jew, conducting a Chinese orchestra in “The Fall of Berlin,” music by a Russian celebrating the man he despised and feared most, one of history’s most infamous tyrants, for an audience that included a German.

Got to get back to Copland – “A Lincoln Portrait,” perhaps? -  but the next project is Prokofiev 5.  Wonder who will be in the audience for that…

Mark Gibson

2nd movement, cont.: Heroism denied - Mahler's 6th Symphony

Heroism denied – Mahler’s 6^th Symphony

For four symphonies, from the 2^nd to the 5^th, Mahler employed and refined new paradigms of symphonic invention, primarily through the use of material – genre, motive and melody - from Des knaben Wunderhorn.  Prior to Mahler, formal models for symphonic movements were derived from Baroque dance movements, among them the Allemande, Sarabande, Gigue and Minuet.  Through Mahler, these models were replaced by the funeral or military march, the Ländler, the waltz and the chorale.  Symphonies 2, 3 and 4 deal with issues of immortality; of heavenly and earthly life, of redemption.  In them we experience resurrection, the tragedy of earthly life; we appeal to and are finally afforded a precious glimpse of heaven, all through the vehicle of folk songs, ditties and dances transformed into symphony. 

The 5^th Symphony, though not usually considered a “Wunderhorn” symphony, is less a different beast from its predecessors than it is the culmination, the apotheosis of Mahler’s symphonic metamorphosis up to that point.  In it, Mahler seems to set forth the ultimate funeral march, the most mordant scherzo, the grandest waltz, the most enchanting love song, the most complicated symphonic fugue, the most radiant chorale and throughout, the most virtuosic writing for orchestra.  It is, in effect, Mahler’s Heldenleben, a triumphant portrait of the symphonic master at the height of his compositional powers.

As a metaphor for turn of the century Viennese society, for a Europe surging into the modern era, Mahler’s 5^th Symphony perfectly reflects the Zeitgeist of a historical period that seemed not to know any boundaries, nor limits to human accomplishment and vision; an overabundance of talent, intellect and energy, slightly tinged with a degree a decadence.  It had, at least in appearance, the makings of a heroic time in Western civilization.

Or so society believed.  Without winding the clock forward to the almost inevitable reckoning of 1914, let us stay with Mahler as he faces his own crisis of faith, the result of which was the Symphony no. 6 in A Minor, referred to as the “Tragic.”  One cannot be sure what led to this crisis.   The personal disasters that would befall him shortly after the composition of the 6^{th –}  the diagnosis of his heart condition, the death of his eldest daughter, the loss of his position in Vienna - could not possibly have been predicted.  No, Mahler was himself at the summit of his career as both conductor and musical authority when he embarked on the 6^th; what ate at his soul, what caused in him this outcry of pain, remains to this day a secret.

Thus he knew it would not be understood, this new work, even by those familiar with his earlier symphonies.  To a public accustomed to the heroic sound of a Strauss tone poem, in an era of societal affluence previously unknown in Western history, the last movement of the 6th in particular must have been acutely distressing.  Yet from our perspective, we can see that Mahler, ever the striver, really had no other symphony to write after the 5^th; he had already gone over the top.   Perhaps prescient of a society overloaded with confidence, turning decadent to the point of collapse, Mahler gave his public a rare view into the possibility of tragedy, of tragedy to come perhaps; of vague origin, but of devastating, inescapable consequence.  What other symphonic work from any period of music paints (or at least concludes with) a grimmer sonic portrait than does the 6^th, especially when seen in relief against the splendor of fin-de-siècle Vienna?

For the public at the premiere, the first movement perhaps didn’t come as much of a surprise; a robust, if grim, march, a wayward transitional chorale, contrasted with an ecstatic love melody, in strict sonata-allegro form, thrillingly executed by a master of form and orchestral timbre.  The sound of distant, vague cowbells must have surprised and intrigued on first hearing, but all doubt would be vanquished by the triumphant surge of love with which the movement concludes. 

No, Mahler’s surprise apparently was to have been the Allegro that followed.  Was his audience ready for this relentless Scherzo, which is at root a continuation of the march of the 1^st movement, but in 3/8 meter?  The tempo is identical (8^th note = quarter note), the play of ½ steps from major to minor is inexorable, the contrasting sections a mockery of another outdated dance form, the gavotte, dubbed by Mahler “Ältväterisch” – “Old fashioned.”  To my sensibility, whatever radiant glow the public feels at the end of the 1^st movement is surely snuffed out by the initial timpani blow of the Scherzo.   We would not hear this type of music again until the Burleske-Rondo of the 9^th, in which bitterness becomes rage; mockery turns savage.

As challenging as this Scherzo might have been for the public, the bigger question for me is: Was Mahler, baton in hand, 1^st movement over, himself ready to launch into the Scherzo?  And here is the root of controversy, for Mahler never performed it this way; he switched the order of the middle movements after the work had already been published, opting instead to follow the Allegro with the elegiac Andante.   For over a century, this decision has been steeped in controversy.  Although nearly all documentary, empirical evidence points to the Andante-Scherzo sequence, vigorously so in the new critical edition of Reinhold Kubik and the Kaplan Foundation, I will vouch for the original order, after experiencing the work myself from the podium.

The logical issue I offer is this: Does the fact that Mahler never performed the original sequence necessarily mean that he didn’t want or wouldn’t have preferred it performed that way?  Is it not possible that in the heat of the first performance he simply couldn’t bring himself to do it; that he could not bear the emotional roller coaster of going from the ecstatic conclusion of the Allegro directly into the macabre horror of the Scherzo?

In our performance last March, we did follow the Allegro with the Scherzo, which made, at least for those of us performing it, a powerful, overwhelming effect.  Following the Scherzo, we gave the audience an extended breather (2-3 minutes), consistent with Mahler’s own indication of a 5-minute pause after the first movements of the 2^nd (1895) and 3^rd (1896) symphonies.  80 straight minutes of such intensity would have been awful burden on the audience (if not on their psyches, at least on their bladders,), not to mention on the orchestra.  We tuned and went into the E-flat glory of the Andante.

The second half of the equation – what best should precede the monumental 4^th movement – has been, to my knowledge, under-addressed.  What became obvious both to me and to the Philharmonia in preparing the work was a sense of rightness going from valedictory ending of the Andante into the oblivion of the initial augmented 6^th chord with which the final movement begins.  Rather than explain the why of it, which merely would reduce the effect to an equation of harmonic relationships, I ask the listener to experience it in this order.

I am intrigued by and have thought a lot about the messages Mahler seeks to convey to the listener in the 6^th, particularly after the 1^st movement, even as I am hesitant to “explain” what I see and hear in the score.  That remains the challenge of every listener and student; to come to terms with Mahler’s language in his or her own way.  I will venture that the initial tune of the last movement, removed from its underlying harmony, bears the imprint of heroism.  The cut of the phrase, the expansiveness of its design, echoes similar ideas in his previous scores; it speaks to me of striving, of overcoming fate, of mankind’s ultimate ascendancy.  But set over the no-man’s land of the A-Flat augmented 6^th chord, the soaring line descends all too rapidly, losing faith in itself.  Suddenly and dramatically bolstered by and reinforced in A Major, the heroic tone rises again, only to stumble on the all-too-familiar ½ step shift to the minor, to the beat of the ever-fateful drum cadence.  The tragedy that unfolds over the next half hour is a journey that I, as a human and as a musician, approach with dread and awe.  While the symphony ends on the darkest side of Mahler’s worldview, it ultimately describes another chapter in our quest for and failure to realize the best within the human spirit.

Mahler’s view would not remain so desperate and hopeless.  In the continuum of his oeuvre, the 6^th will be followed by the mystery and magic of the 7^th, the majesty and pageant of the 8^th, the bittersweet musings on life and mortality of Das Lied von der Erde, and the ultimate symphonic statement that is the 9^th.  But at that moment in time, Mahler, at that premiere performance, knew only the extent of his terrifying vision for himself and perhaps for humanity.   He could only see on the podium, laid out in the score before him, his trajectory for disaster; future triumphs were if anything a distant dream.   Thus he chose, for whatever reason, to avoid what I consider the braver, more dramatic choice; the heroic choice.  Heroism denied.  We will never comprehend the why of his personal decision, but we are certainly entitled to question and to challenge it.   And indeed, to reverse it, if just this once.

- Mark Gibson