Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

We're breaking through

(Via Anastasia Tsiouclas.)

Der ferne Klang (Clinton-era staging)

Thaddeus Strassberger, who is directing the production of Schreker's Der ferne Klang that opens tomorrow at Bard, had considerable success with Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots in the same venue last summer. Zachary Woolfe, of the Capital site, talks to Strassberger about his ideas, which seem intriguing. I must say, though, that a major opportunity has been missed. With the Chelsea Clinton nuptials transpiring the following day in nearby Rhinebeck, wouldn't it have been far more timely and provocative to stage the opera in the period of the Clinton White House? To give you an idea of what such a Regie vision of the opera might have looked like, I have prepared a film montage to go along with the opening Vorspiel of the opera. All joking aside, we here at Noise wish all the best to the newlyweds.

Schreker and the Clintons

Tomorrow night, at Bard College upstate, Franz Schreker's opera Der ferne Klang will have its long-awaited American stage premiere. The following day, in the nearby town of Rhinebeck, NY, Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of the former President and the current Secretary of State, will be married. The two events have no obvious connection, so I decided to invent one. This is long-lost television footage of Bill Clinton performing an arrangement for saxophone and chamber orchestra of the Nachtstück from Der ferne Klang. Notice the, er, strikingly violin-like timbre he obtains from his instrument? I tried.

Condoleezza's Mozart

Peter Dobrin reports on an unusual concert that took place at the Mann Center in Philadelphia last night: Condoleezza Rice performing the slow movement of Mozart's D-minor Concerto and Aretha Franklin singing "Nessun dorma," among other tunes. The video clip suggests that Secretary Rice won't be putting Mitsuko Uchida out of work any time soon.

Summer movie review: Inception

Last night I went to see the oneiric blockbuster Inception. Christopher Nolan, the director, often has unexpected musical moments in his films — Boito's Mefistofele figured in Batman Begins — and in this case the plot pivots on Edith Piaf singing "Je ne regrette rien." Hans Zimmer is the composer, and his score is interestingly obsessive in the way that it works over and stretches various minimal motifs, including the brassy "heartbeat" from Piaf's famous recording. The LA Times interviewed Zimmer about the score. Oh yes, the movie is good, brainy fun. The previews included a Levi's commercial that used the opening of Rheingold.

Chord of the curse

I was whiling away a Saturday morning listening to Wagner's first finished opera, Die Feen — in preparation for my next book, Wagnerism, I'm going through the operas one by one — when a loud D-minor chord in Act II stopped me short. Namely, this:

Arindal, a king in love with the fairy Ada, has been put to a test: he must not curse his beloved, no matter what horrors she appears to have committed. When Ada seems to hurl their children into a flaming abyss, he fails. "Verruchtes Weib, sei denn verflucht!" he cries. "Wicked woman, you are cursed!" To symbolize this unfortunate turn of events, the harmony lurches from F-sharp major to D minor, an alarming sequence because the two chords have no notes in common. At the age of twenty, Wagner is already beginning to discover his characteristic harmonic wizardry. I thought of the Tarnhelm motif, among other eerie combinations of chords. But I also thought of this:

"Du bist verflucht!": Jochanaan's curse in Strauss's Salome. The lurch this time is from F major (or F dominant seventh) to C-sharp minor — different chords, same major-third plunge. Moreover, the voicing of the curse is remarkably similar:

What are the chances that Strauss not only knew but remembered in detail this long-neglected early opera of Wagner? As it happens, pretty good; when Die Feen had its belated world premiere, in Munich, in 1888, the young Richard Strauss conducted the rehearsals. "Wagner's lion's paw is already quite strong," he remarked.

Recordings: 1) Linda Esther Gray and John Alexander, with Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Orfeo 062 833; 2) José van Dam, with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, EMI 67159. The parts for the 1888 premiere can be viewed here.

The man who played with pulse

Reich and friends play Drumming at Maverick on July 31.

Eek! Another Bayreuth opening

Above is an image from Hans Neuenfels's rat-infested production of Lohengrin, which opened at Bayreuth earlier today. The customary explosion of boos greeted the directing team when they made their bows. On the webcast one could also hear, oddly, a few boos for Andris Nelsons, who, I thought, conducted with pulsing energy and palpable musical authority. Chancellor Angela Merkel was in the audience, and, amid the clamor, she was observed to direct applause in Neuenfels's direction. "Das war wunderbar," she said afterward, according to Die Welt. Perhaps the rats spoke to her allegorically....

Karajan conducts Ives

The invaluable historic-recordings site Pristine Audio recently posted several little-known recordings of Herbert von Karajan, documenting his only concerts with American orchestras on American soil: two programs with the New York Philharmonic in 1958 and one with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1959. (In 1967 he twice conducted the Cleveland Orchestra, in Lucerne and Salzburg.) The L. A. appearance, which took place at the Hollywood Bowl, is notable, or not, as one of the very few occasions on which Karajan exercised his powers on American music: he led Ives's The Unanswered Question and began the show with "The Star-Spangled Banner." As far as I can tell from the Karajan online databank, the conductor's only other dabblings in Americana took place in Berlin, in 1979, when he tried out Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, with Alexis Weissenberg at the piano (not a success, says Richard Osborne, Karajan's biographer); and in Ulm, in 1930, when, at a New Year's Eve concert, he presented W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues," in the Fletcher Henderson arrangement, and Vincent Youmans's "Hallelujah!" (Osborne reports that the conductor participated in a session of "jazz for three pianos"). Karajan evidently enjoyed listening to Gershwin and jazz in his spare time; he once told the Vienna Philharmonic that he was on his way to see Louis Armstrong, who, unlike the ensemble in front of him, never sped up or slowed down by mistake. In any case, the Ives is interesting, if not cherishable; it's a brisk performance, lacking in atmosphere, but it has a certain bite. Of greater interest is the Beethoven Ninth with the New York Philharmonic: it has the clear textures and athletic drive characteristic of Karajan's Beethoven from this period. The soloists are very fine: Leontyne Price, Léopold Simoneau, Norman Scott, and the late Maureen Forrester. You can listen to the entire first movement for free.

Here we go again

Kate Connolly writes in the Guardian about Eva and Katharina Wagner's first Bayreuth season, which opens on Sunday: "Fresh touches introduced by the sisters will include a new production of Lohengrin [by Hans Neuenfels], in which, Katharina Wagner has let slip, rats will be let loose on a set designed to resemble an animal research laboratory." Perhaps the rats will discover the rotting rabbits from Schlingensief's Parsifal. Progressives are unimpressed, preemptively attacking the new regime as "stuffy" and "out of date." You can listen to Sunday's Lohengrin via Internet radio; heading the cast is Jonas Kaufmann. Salzburg, meanwhile, is gearing up for the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's new opera Dionysos, on Tuesday; it seems to be a fantasia on the life of Nietzsche. Tom Service notes that the vocal score can be viewed online, courtesy of Universal Edition. Austrian Radio broadcasts the opera next Friday.

Previously: Bayreuth pilgrimage.

Update: Intermezzo has pictures from the Lohengrin. Eek!

Further update: AC Douglas is disheartened.