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Brahms’ First

Brahms’ First

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Remove the apostrophe and it would also be true. I often put Brahms first; he’s one of my favorite composers. When I heard about the program of last night’s concert I knew I’d want to be there.

In the program notes, I learned that Brahms began writing his first symphony when he was in 20s, but it was 20 years before he completed the work. One problem, apparently, was Beethoven, the long shadow he cast over the 19th-century symphonic repertoire.

In fact, the pulsing timpani that opens the first movement is sometimes thought to be an homage to Beethoven. But Brahms finds his footing. The sonorous chorales, the plucky pizzicatos, the French horn melody in the final movement: all of these shout “Brahms.”

I’ve been listening to this symphony for decades, mostly recorded versions, a few live ones. I even played the last movement — in youth orchestra, when I was last chair string bass. So believe me when I say I’ve never heard it as the National Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda conducting, played it last night. The pace, the musicality, the finale that made the made my skin prickle. I felt like I was inside the music. And when the final notes sounded, the hall erupted, as it should have. It was Brahms first, after all.

No Way to Say No

No Way to Say No

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When I began walking this morning, pink clouds were piling up on the horizon. The day was just getting to know itself. I needed a quiet tune, so I chose Dan Fogelberg’s “To the Morning.” 

There’s a line in the song I’ve always liked: “There’s really no way to say no to the morning.” It’s an obvious statement but one I need to hear sometimes.

To listen to it as I walked this Monday morning was to hear how beautifully reality can be crafted. Yes, there’s no way to say no. But there are so many ways to say yes.

Bouncing Along

Bouncing Along

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Music matters. I believe this always, but especially when choosing the soundtrack for a walk. Today’s choice was Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. 

I started with Number Two, remembering the story my long-ago piano teacher told me about the physical rigors of playing the trumpet solos of that piece. Her husband played the trumpet, she said, and the second Brandenburg was so difficult, even when played on the smaller piccolo trumpet, that one could pop a blood vessel with the effort.

Apparently, she did not make this up. A quick bit of research today tells me that the second Bach Brandenburg Concerto is “a trumpet player’s Everest.”

For a walker, though, it’s an energetic beauty of a piece. It revs one up and keeps one going. And this morning, it kept me bouncing along. 

(One of my favorite music-themed photos, shot May 2010 in Vienna’s Musikverein.)

Rekindling the Rhapsody

Rekindling the Rhapsody

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I had just walked into the house when I heard a familiar piece on the radio. It harkened back, far back, into memory. It was a Brahms Rhapsody, a piece I never learned completely but mastered the first few pages well enough to play — effusively but ineptly — long ago. 

I’m in a funny place with what I still think of as my new piano. I love playing, but I don’t like practicing anymore than I did in fifth grade. 

What’s an adult musician to do? Playing a la fakando — the faux musical term my stand partner Greg and I penciled in above impossible runs when I played string bass in high school — is hard to pull off on a solo instrument. 

When I heard the Brahms, though, I remembered. It’s the music itself that makes me practice. Give me a piece I’m itching to master and I’ll put in some time. So I’m rekindling the rhapsody. 

Sousa!

Sousa!

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There was a time when I played John Phillip Sousa music as we took down the Christmas tree. It was cheerful and made that seasonal task less melancholy than it would have been. 

But I hadn’t listened to Sousa marches in a while, winter or summer, until day before yesterday. Looking for suitable accompaniment to my Independence Day walk, I streamed a recording of Stars and Stripes Forever, the Washington Post March, Liberty Bell, Thunderer and many others. 

They certainly put a skip in my step, which would otherwise have been lagging due to heat and humidity.

It was a 45-minute trip to the turn of the century, not the last turn, the one before that. I imagined unicycles and bunting and girls with pigtails, all made possible by America’s March King. 

Today I repeated the experience. It felt just as fine. 

(Military observance at Sousa’s grave. Courtesy Wikipedia)

Listening Local

Listening Local

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We live close to one of the nation’s great symphony orchestras, but sometimes I like to keep my listening local — hyper-local, in fact. On Saturday there were two concerts within a 10-minute drive from the house: a community orchestra’s year-end performance and an organ and trumpet recital at church. The timing would be close: one began at 4, the other at 6. Could we take in both?

It was not only possible, but it seemed the best possible use of a rainy Saturday afternoon. The Reston Community Orchestra was trying out the last of its four conductor finalists, and sparks (and at one point even the baton) were flying as the orchestra galloped through two Mozart overtures, the Haydn Cello Concerto and Beethoven’s Second Symphony. 

Later, in the (post-vigil-Mass) sanctuary, the church’s new music director turned the organ around so the audience could see all its keyboards and stops. He and the trumpeter began with Handel’s “The Trumpet Shall Sound” from “The Messiah” and ended with Mussorgsky’s “The Great Gate of Kiev” from “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Can any two instruments sound fuller and more orchestra-like? I don’t think so. 

At least on Saturday, listening local was the way to go. 

(Members of the Reston Community Orchestra take a bow)

Anniversary of a Masterpiece

Anniversary of a Masterpiece

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Now I know why I was hearing snippets of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on the radio Tuesday. It was the two-hundredth anniversary of its premiere. For two centuries now we humans have had this masterwork at our disposal. 

Yesterday I read an account of its creation on the Marginalian. I’d heard some of this before, but I didn’t know about Beethoven’s devotion to Schiller, whose “Ode to Joy” the symphony’s last movement celebrates, or the piece’s long gestation period. I like to think of the notes rattling around in the composer’s head as he took one of his long walks through Vienna. 

Beethoven insisted on conducting, though he was totally deaf by that point.  He was allowed to do so with the proviso that another conductor be present as a “backup.” This conductor instructed the musicians to look only at him. 

When the last notes sounded the audience at first fell silent, perhaps aware even then that they had witnessed not just a concert but a moment in history. And then, in the words of the Marginalian’s Maria Popova, “the gasping silence broke into a scream of applause. People leapt to their feet, waving their handkerchiefs and chanting his name. Beethoven, still facing the orchestra and still waving his arms to the delayed internal time of music only he could hear, noticed none of it, until Karoline Unger [the contralto soloist] stood up, took his arm, and gently turned him around.”

(Beethoven by Julian Schmid)

Noise or Music?

Noise or Music?

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I’d been itching to watch the movie “Amadeus” ever since I heard Mozart’s Requiem in Kentucky. Last night I had the chance.

Though the score is the star of the show (mostly Mozart), one passage of dialogue stood out, when Mozart convinces the emperor to show an opera based on the play “The Marriage of Figaro.”

“In a play if more than one person speaks at the same time, it’s just noise, no one can understand a word. But with opera, with music… with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at the same time, and it’s not noise, it’s perfect harmony!”

Simultaneous conversations that produce beauty not cacophony. Perhaps we should be singing out all our national disagreements. A strange thought … but maybe an interesting experiment?

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Sold Out at Singletary

Sold Out at Singletary

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In Kentucky for the weekend, I take in a sold-out concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts, including a spirited performance of the Mozart Requiem. The stage was packed with the orchestra and combined choirs of the University of Kentucky. 

The last time I was at this venue I was on the stage. Last night I was (gratefully) in the audience. And what an audience it was: attentive, respectful, spirited, just what the excellent music deserved. When the final notes sounded, the audience leapt to its feet for a standing ovation.

Though I love attending musical events in the D.C. area, I especially enjoyed last night’s performance. There was a communal feeling to it, a sense of togetherness among musicians and listeners, as we all fell under the spell of the Lacrimosa, said to contain the last eight bars of music Mozart wrote. 

Worthwhile

Worthwhile

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The rain has stopped, the sun has peeked through the clouds, and I have in mind a piece of music I always hum this time of year: “God So Loved the World,” by John Stainer.

Not knowing much about the composer I looked him up this morning. He’s not as contemporary as I thought. His dates, 1860-1901, mark him as a Victorian through and through.

Though his choral music output was prodigious, nothing much is performed these days except “The Crucifixion,” from which this piece emerged as an Easter and Passiontide favorite. 

Give it a listen, if you have time. Maybe you’ll agree with me that to be remembered for one piece of music — if it were a piece like this — would make an entire life worthwhile.