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.
