Of Romeo and Radiohead

The concert held on Friday, April 24th at the Strathmore was an excellent program which led the audience through an exploration of the boundaries of music. It isn’t too often that you will get a concert featuring a Mozart piece coupled with a piano transcription of a contemporary British rock band and a piano concerto to be played exclusively with the left hand.

The interactive and nontraditional tone of the concert was kicked off by an aside from Conductor James Gaffigan. I always love to hear a little bit of commentary from the conductor - I think it makes the peace more readable for the audience. If nothing else, it breaks up the somewhat severe atmosphere that can come to exist at a concert. Mr. Gaffigan introduced the first piece, ballet music from Mozart’s Idomeneo, with some comments about how much variety was packed into the piece, as well as some jabs at the character of Mozart. (I think this is a running joke in the musical community - I have a distinct memory of sitting in high school band class trudging through a Mozart piece and hearing somebody play a line completely wrong. The director cut us off, looked at the offending musician and said “Mozart would have slapped you for that… and then he would have slept with your wife.” Hearing a teacher say something like that in high school provides enough fuel to get you through the day). Mr. Gaffigan was right, this was a very interesting piece with lots of different musical moods. I also have to acknowledge the energy with which he conducted the piece, although I feared that if this was how he treated Mozart, a heart attack or a baton impaled violinist was awaiting him when he got to the Prokofiev piece at the end of the program.

As if jumping forward in time a hundred and forty years wasn’t enough, we were then treated to a piano concerto written for one hand. Christopher O’Riley, of NPR’s “From the Top” fame, played Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major with all the rapture that the composer surely intended. Listening to a piece like this, which was so obviously composed for showmanship, you can’t help but think that you are supposed to be watching keenly as well. Seeing a piano virtuoso work with one hand is an odd visual sensation, which is only augmented by the dramatic effects of the strings’ bowing and the conductor’s gigantic conducting.

And this brings us to the highlight of the program, Mr. O’Riley’s transcriptions of music by Radiohead. I can not claim to be too familiar with the work of this contemporary rock band, but I have heard some of their songs and I know that it isn’t the sort of thing that many symphony orchestras go around putting on their programs. After a brief spoken introduction, Mr. O’Riley played his three transcriptions brilliantly, followed by some Debussy as an encore. Whether you liked the pieces or not, what you were seeing here was an artist pushing the boundaries of music. Moving a subject from one medium of art to another is not uncommon - how many times have poems or pieces of literature informed symphonic works? However, moving a subject from the domain of popular music to that of artistic music always raises a few more eyebrows. Even in the Royal Court of Austria, Mozart’s opera’s, which are now thought to be so conservative, were accused of containing subject matter of a base nature. The lady sitting behind me at the concert did not seem too pleased that Rock and Roll was on the evening’s program – she let out an audible sigh of relief when we moved on to the Debussy. Interestingly, when something moves the other way, from high art to popular, the alarm is not as severe. I don’t remember people taking to the streets when Puccini’s Madame Butterfly became Miss Saigon.

The second half of the concert was equally filled with diversity and contrast. The fun and jazzy sounds of Bernstein’s Dances from On the Town (I’ve had that darn tune stuck in my head all weekend) were a very noticeable foil to the intensely dark and dramatic tones of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. I laughed at the thought of putting Bernstein’s West Side Story Dances up against Prokofiev’s treatment of the same subject matter, but that might have just been too ironic for an already intellectually dynamic night. Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is one of those pieces that you can really get into – it’s deep and dark, and at times, just really loud. The audience responded to this energy. There was even a yell of “yeah!” from the balcony right before the movement for the death of Juliet. After you’ve heard bits from a classical ballet, a one-handed French Impressionistic concerto, a 20th century American Jazz-Dance piece, British hard rock on a piano, and Soviet-Social Realism - anything goes.

Mozart and his Requiem

I respect Mozart and his influence on western music as much as the next consumer of classical music, but I have always been more drawn to the emotionally charged pieces of the romantic period and the intellectual depth of modernism. Mozart’s works are technically flawless, but there is something about many of them that just doesn’t connect with me personally. The Requiem is different. It’s so full of textures and emotion. At times it is tender, and at other times it is fiery. At its core, it is a profound piece of music that masterfully combines a beautiful orchestra with a powerful choir and soloists. To see it performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in the Strathmore on March 7th was a joy for the eyes and ears.

Before delving into the history of the piece, one is first struck by the technical aspects. This is a big piece of music - literally. Strings and brass and vocal soloists, and a massive choir bring this piece to life. Watching this piece unfurl, I thought to myself how difficult it must be to keep something this grand together. I love watching conductors, seeing how they control the environment with subtle or gargantuan gesticulations, so seeing conductor Jun Märkl sweeping the air so grandly as to be seen by the last row of the choir was a thing to behold. I would also be a traitor to my instrument if I did not point out that this is one of the first times that the trombone is seen in such a prominent position. The fact that low brass even had a spot in a classical piece is notable, not to mention some beautiful solo parts.

The true allure of this piece is the mystery that has surrounded it since its composition in 1791 (you could even say it started even before composition, as Mozart was so unclear of the identity of the man that came to him to commission it). I have always been captivated by stories behind the music, and how fate and circumstance molded the modern perception that we have of a piece of music, and Mozart’s Requiem, a piece written for the powerful circumstance of death, takes the cake in this respect. The story is so compelling that it has been retold as a short play by Pushkin, an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov, and a play by Peter Shaffer which was later adapted into 1984’s Best Picture of the Year – Amadeus. As the story (I apologize for abridging it so) goes, that Mozart did not know the gentleman who had commissioned this piece, and with his health diminishing as he wrote the piece, he mistakenly embraced the logic that the death mass must be for him. This belief must have fueled him to work on the piece with a special dedication, even as his death became imminent. The Lacrimosa section was the last music that Mozart ever wrote, leaving his pupils to finish the Requiem.

It’s a sad story, but, in an odd way, it seems morbidly appropriate for a man who gave so much to our musical tradition. Psychologists (as well as experience and common sense) tell us how the fear of death and the desire to leave a legacy are powerful drivers of our actions here on earth. Mozart saw both in this piece. This confluence of emotion and talent in composition is something remarkable and desperately uncommon. Although the Requiem might not have been intended for him, it is his. In listening to it, you can see and hear a genius searching for his place in this world and the next.