January NYC highlights: The Fringe, György Ligeti, Thomas Adès
I just saw the NY premiere of Thomas Adès’ Asyla from the third-to last row in the rear balcony of Carnegie Hall. (Tix for two were still $155.) The recording of Asyla, which I got soon after it came out in 1998, made such an impression on me that I purchased the score in London several years ago.
At this point I know Asyla well, possibly even too well for complete enjoyment of the Berlin Philharmonic's performance. In three of the four movements, tiny events happen before a crash, and I couldn’t really hear any of the tiny events well enough, even though all are marked “as loud as possible” in the score. Being so high up must have been the problem; perhaps in the $300 seats I would have heard the details better. In both movements one and four, a de-tuned piano plays a sharp pair of chords before climatic storms, and in movement three a solo(!) violin scrapes a riff right ahead of disco delirium. I missed them all that that night. (In Concerto Conciso, another fabulous Adès piece, there is a important pizzicato double-bass part that can’t be heard even on disc. Maybe he needs to put a pick-up and amp on the instrument, like a jazz player.)
The famous movement of Asyla is the third, “Ecstasio,” which combines a straight-up techno beat with lurid polyrhythms. Readers of Do The Math will recall my hesitation about combining rock beats and classical music. “Ecstasio” works because the beat is straight up and down German techno hell, no groove or undulation required. On the record with the Birmingham Symphony, the player appropriately swats his bass drum like a metronome. In the Berlin Philhamonic last night, the bass drummer started fine -- but then he looked up at Simon Rattle and slowed down for a beat or two. Note to bass drummers in “Ecstasio:” keep your head down, ignore the conductor, and don’t drag. Don’t rush either, but for god’s sake, DON’T DRAG.
These Iverson-specific quibbles aside, hearing Asyla live confirmed its place as one of the most important 20th century works for large orchestra. Adès has taken the uncompromising, knowledgeable, and frequently unlikeable modernist ethos that has dominated European classical music for 90 years and given it a surreal pop sensibility. That pop sensibility is reflected in the reasonable dimensions of Adès’ work: Asyla is only about 22 minutes in length, in four bite-sized movements, and never asks the listener for undue patience.
If anything, the sleepy section I was sitting in was too patient. One of the climatic storms I referred to earlier is the fourth movement’s pure, triple forte Eb minor chord. (Adès almost always has a loud minor triad “signal” in the closing movements of his longer works.) After that devastating chord, the work burps and yawps to nothingness and infinity, like a few wisps of smoke over the battlefield. There is only about 40 seconds of music left after Eb minor, and if you knew this in advance, the “play is done” feeling was rarefied. Many of my neighbors, presumably expecting the piece to outstay its welcome, chose to fiddle and twitch or open their programs in that last 40 seconds. Bernard Holland, in his review in The New York Times, found the last two movements “unfinished.” That is not true, but an audience who held their breath during the fadeout would have helped.
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Adès’ musical father is György Ligeti, whom Lincoln Center honored with three programs of chamber music two weeks ago. I was at the first and third programs, and Chamber Concerto in particular was hair-raising. Like Asyla I know a recording well and own the score, but in Alice Tully Hall I had nothing but delight in the committed performance of Chamber Concerto.
Considering the daunting amount of work involved for the players to get such a complex piece to performance level, it seems such a shame that the musicians only get to play it once. The Chamber Society of Lincoln Center should program Chamber Concerto every week - I’d go whenever I was in town. Like Alex Ross and Allan Kozinn, I regard Ligeti as the greatest living classical composer, and for a beautiful assessment of the second concert (the one I missed) go to the last paragraph of this New Yorker piece by Ross.
By the way, the Horn Trio’s last movement (discussed in the Ross piece) could not be a clearer antecedent to Adès—the desynchronized falling seconds in multiple registers are common to both composers.
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The Fringe is comprised of George Garzone on saxophones, John Lockwood on bass, and Bob Gullotti on drums, and they hail from Boston. I have heard about The Fringe for years, but I was not prepared for their brilliance.
They play free and tonal at the same time, with an advanced post-Coltrane vocabulary. Garzone and Lockwood listen to each other very intensely, and it often sounds like they are playing on chord changes (but they are not). Gullotti storms and takes over the texture in the right places. It is free jazz of a very high order, and of a style unique to The Fringe.
The Fringe were performing at the Tea Lounge on Union Street in Brooklyn. Talk about DIY! They have been together for 33 years, and still drive 4 hours down from Boston to play in front of a noisy audience and a passed tip jar. (There was no cover.) The back of the room was terrible - screaming children even. The front of the room was like a church. I heard much love from audience members afterward: “I moved to the East Coast to play music after attending a Fringe concert in California.” “I grew up on the Fringe. What I know about music, I learned from them.” “Garzone has the greatest harmonic control of any living saxophonist.” “This band means so much to me.”
It reminded me of a similar experience a year ago, when another trio from Boston - Joe Maneri, Matt Maneri, and Randy Peterson - played incredible free music at Tonic. Hello, Boston! New Yorkers are feeling the heat.
At this point I know Asyla well, possibly even too well for complete enjoyment of the Berlin Philharmonic's performance. In three of the four movements, tiny events happen before a crash, and I couldn’t really hear any of the tiny events well enough, even though all are marked “as loud as possible” in the score. Being so high up must have been the problem; perhaps in the $300 seats I would have heard the details better. In both movements one and four, a de-tuned piano plays a sharp pair of chords before climatic storms, and in movement three a solo(!) violin scrapes a riff right ahead of disco delirium. I missed them all that that night. (In Concerto Conciso, another fabulous Adès piece, there is a important pizzicato double-bass part that can’t be heard even on disc. Maybe he needs to put a pick-up and amp on the instrument, like a jazz player.)
The famous movement of Asyla is the third, “Ecstasio,” which combines a straight-up techno beat with lurid polyrhythms. Readers of Do The Math will recall my hesitation about combining rock beats and classical music. “Ecstasio” works because the beat is straight up and down German techno hell, no groove or undulation required. On the record with the Birmingham Symphony, the player appropriately swats his bass drum like a metronome. In the Berlin Philhamonic last night, the bass drummer started fine -- but then he looked up at Simon Rattle and slowed down for a beat or two. Note to bass drummers in “Ecstasio:” keep your head down, ignore the conductor, and don’t drag. Don’t rush either, but for god’s sake, DON’T DRAG.
These Iverson-specific quibbles aside, hearing Asyla live confirmed its place as one of the most important 20th century works for large orchestra. Adès has taken the uncompromising, knowledgeable, and frequently unlikeable modernist ethos that has dominated European classical music for 90 years and given it a surreal pop sensibility. That pop sensibility is reflected in the reasonable dimensions of Adès’ work: Asyla is only about 22 minutes in length, in four bite-sized movements, and never asks the listener for undue patience.
If anything, the sleepy section I was sitting in was too patient. One of the climatic storms I referred to earlier is the fourth movement’s pure, triple forte Eb minor chord. (Adès almost always has a loud minor triad “signal” in the closing movements of his longer works.) After that devastating chord, the work burps and yawps to nothingness and infinity, like a few wisps of smoke over the battlefield. There is only about 40 seconds of music left after Eb minor, and if you knew this in advance, the “play is done” feeling was rarefied. Many of my neighbors, presumably expecting the piece to outstay its welcome, chose to fiddle and twitch or open their programs in that last 40 seconds. Bernard Holland, in his review in The New York Times, found the last two movements “unfinished.” That is not true, but an audience who held their breath during the fadeout would have helped.
-----------------------------------
Adès’ musical father is György Ligeti, whom Lincoln Center honored with three programs of chamber music two weeks ago. I was at the first and third programs, and Chamber Concerto in particular was hair-raising. Like Asyla I know a recording well and own the score, but in Alice Tully Hall I had nothing but delight in the committed performance of Chamber Concerto.
Considering the daunting amount of work involved for the players to get such a complex piece to performance level, it seems such a shame that the musicians only get to play it once. The Chamber Society of Lincoln Center should program Chamber Concerto every week - I’d go whenever I was in town. Like Alex Ross and Allan Kozinn, I regard Ligeti as the greatest living classical composer, and for a beautiful assessment of the second concert (the one I missed) go to the last paragraph of this New Yorker piece by Ross.
By the way, the Horn Trio’s last movement (discussed in the Ross piece) could not be a clearer antecedent to Adès—the desynchronized falling seconds in multiple registers are common to both composers.
------------------------------------
The Fringe is comprised of George Garzone on saxophones, John Lockwood on bass, and Bob Gullotti on drums, and they hail from Boston. I have heard about The Fringe for years, but I was not prepared for their brilliance.
They play free and tonal at the same time, with an advanced post-Coltrane vocabulary. Garzone and Lockwood listen to each other very intensely, and it often sounds like they are playing on chord changes (but they are not). Gullotti storms and takes over the texture in the right places. It is free jazz of a very high order, and of a style unique to The Fringe.
The Fringe were performing at the Tea Lounge on Union Street in Brooklyn. Talk about DIY! They have been together for 33 years, and still drive 4 hours down from Boston to play in front of a noisy audience and a passed tip jar. (There was no cover.) The back of the room was terrible - screaming children even. The front of the room was like a church. I heard much love from audience members afterward: “I moved to the East Coast to play music after attending a Fringe concert in California.” “I grew up on the Fringe. What I know about music, I learned from them.” “Garzone has the greatest harmonic control of any living saxophonist.” “This band means so much to me.”
It reminded me of a similar experience a year ago, when another trio from Boston - Joe Maneri, Matt Maneri, and Randy Peterson - played incredible free music at Tonic. Hello, Boston! New Yorkers are feeling the heat.
