In times past, the organ was a greater presence in American life than it is now. Churches had organs (and congregations). Big movie theaters did. For about thirty years, organists accompanied silent films, often improvising. (A personal note: one of those organists was my brilliant and multitalented grandmother, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.) The “king of instruments” was on his throne.
The king presided once more at David Geffen Hall, when the New York Philharmonic hosted a movie night. On the screen was Metropolis. There was no orchestra, no Philharmonic, on the stage. Just an organ.
Metropolis is one of the outstanding films of the silent era. It is an example of German Expressionism, directed by Fritz Lang. It first saw the light of day in 1927. Metropolis is known as a “science-fiction classic,” and so it is. But it is about many things, including politics, economics, and human nature. Then again, that must be true of all, or most, science-fiction classics.
Cameron Carpenter was the organist in David Geffen Hall. An American born in 1981, he has carved out an image as the “bad boy” of the organ. I don’t believe he would mind being described as “flamboyant,” in the tradition of Virgil Fox. Image aside, he is a very good and serious musician. And he has composed a score for Metropolis—or mainly composed it, I’m given to understand. He leaves room for improvisation.
On his music rack was a computer tablet. It did not show him the score but rather the movie. He watched the movie on that small screen as we, in the audience, watched it on the big one. The movie is two hours long. Hence the score is as well. That’s a lot of music, and a lot of memorizing.
The score is diverse. It has the Baroque, the Romantic, and other styles. But it also hangs together, as a score. It does not come off pastichey. Carpenter follows the pace of the movie, the arc of the movie. He uses the whole organ, from growly lows to bright, trumpety highs. Unless I am mistaken, he calls on a Bach chorale, repeatedly and effectively. Let me say, too, that there is considerable understatement in this score. Carpenter does not overwhelm the movie with music; rather, he supports it.
In my years as a critic, I have not been one to mention an audience, certainly not to chastise an audience. Let me make an exception now. First, people laughed, over and over, in wrong places. I think they weren’t used to conventions of moviemaking in the 1920s. But worse, they did not give Cameron Carpenter his due. When the movie was over, they left—as they would a standard contemporary movie, shown at the mall. Applause was light. Carpenter quit the stage quickly and came back for one brief curtain call. And what we had heard was two hours of remarkable creativity and playing. A mightily impressive feat.
I thought, “Well, I’ll applaud him robustly in my review.”
The next night, in Carnegie Hall, the audience stood and cheered for Víkingur Ólafsson at length. They cheered as though for Elvis Presley or Maria Callas. I do not begrudge Mr. Ólafsson his ovation—but I could not help noticing the disparity.
Ólafsson is a pianist, born in 1984. As his name gives away, he is an Icelander. He must be the most prominent Icelander in music since Kristinn Sigmundsson, the operatic bass (if you don’t count Björk, the pop star). This season, if I have understood correctly, Ólafsson is going around the world to play a single work, in recital: Bach’s Goldberg Variations. He will play them eighty-eight times (same as the number of keys on a standard piano). Deutsche Grammophon released a recording of Ólafsson in the Goldbergs last October.
The pianist has written,
Bach is the musical love of my life. I cannot go more than a couple of days without playing his works. For me, Bach’s music does not belong to a bygone era, it belongs to the here and now. That’s one of the reasons he fascinates every new generation of musicians—because of how inherently open this music is to new ideas, styles, and emotions. His music always reflects the world it finds itself in, past, present, and future.
It was the Goldberg Variations, naturally, that Ólafsson played in Carnegie Hall. And a question arises, when you play this work in recital: do you play something else beforehand? The Goldbergs are an awkward length, being not quite a full program, but verging on it. The Brahms Requiem is just the same way. Do you program something else before it or not? Two seasons ago, Lang Lang played the Goldbergs in Carnegie Hall. He played the Schumann Arabeske beforehand. At the Salzburg Festival in 1959, Glenn Gould played the Goldbergs. (There is a recording of this recital, and the playing is great.) Beforehand, he played Sweelinck (one of his specialties), Schoenberg (the same), and Mozart—a Mozart sonata.
Víkingur Ólafsson played only the Goldbergs. When he walked onto the stage, he was greeted with whoops—his reputation, or his recording, had preceded him. In the aria, he was very, very slow. It occurred to me: He might play the aria at a different tempo every time he sits down to the Goldbergs. The tempo probably depends on the mood of the moment. I will not go through all thirty variations—but maybe I could note some generalities.
He is a logical and excellent pianist. He played the Goldbergs very pianistically, using the full Steinway. What I mean is, there was no attempt to imitate a harpsichord. Ólafsson is a two-handed pianist. By that I mean, he takes care to bring out the left hand, more than most pianists do. Sometimes he made too much of a point of it, I thought. Many of the variations were bold and clean. He has a touch of Weissenberg in him, I thought. (Alexis Weissenberg was a pianist, born in Bulgaria, who lived from 1929 to 2012.) Some variations were on the blunt side, I thought: a little slapdash and careless. But a man is entitled to his own Goldberg Variations—certainly a good pianist is. And Víkingur Ólafsson’s embrace of this work is a happy event for the music world.
As the audience stood and cheered, Ólafsson took a microphone, to make remarks. He explained that there would be no encore. I’m going from memory, but I believe he said something like, “There can be no encore after the world’s greatest keyboard work.” Is it? Yes, I suppose—unless you can count the same composer’s Well-Tempered Clavier (both books) as one work.
Ólafsson said that he was pleased to make a “middle-aged debut” at Carnegie Hall. When he was a student in New York, he said, he came to this hall three times a week, with a ten-dollar ticket. He sat way up high. Then he pointed to the people sitting way up high and said, “I was playing for you.”
Jeanine De Bique is a young soprano from Trinidad. She gave a recital at the Park Avenue Armory—in its (glorious) Board of Officers Room. Accompanying her was Warren Jones, a veteran pianist, a master of the song literature. De Bique is a lyric soprano, broadly speaking, and she has made a particular reputation in Baroque music. But her voice sounded very big in the Board of Officers Room—a fine venue for singing. Sometimes, I wished for more pliancy in the voice. More suppleness, more “bend.” But it is a splendid instrument, which can sound wet and shimmering.
May I add that this soprano is a beauty (reminding me somewhat of Barbara Hendricks)? That has nothing to do with music-making, true—but it does not hurt a career. Don’t shoot the messenger. (Complain to the world instead.)
De Bique’s program was a balanced and appealing one. It did not have a “theme” (thank heaven), but was rather an assemblage of good and diverse songs, which together made a satisfying musical meal. The “meal” began with Henry Purcell: “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation” (in the “realization” by Benjamin Britten). The soprano’s intonation was iffy, with flatness a problem. But she brought the right passion, while observing stylistic boundaries. Her cries of “Gabriel” were piercing and rending.
As for Warren Jones, his playing was crisp, fluid, knowing. He has the ability to support a singer and yet play with authority—even exuding an air of command. Often, he goes without sheet music in a recital; in this one, he used it, however.
After Purcell came Reynaldo Hahn—five songs, ending with “Le printemps” (which Leontyne Price loved, and sang with such exuberance). Ms. De Bique did not yet have intonation worked out, but she sang her Hahn with intelligence and heart.
And then? Henry T. Burleigh, perhaps better known as “Harry Burleigh.” He was an American composer, the grandson of a slave, who lived from 1866 to 1949. He arranged many a spiritual, bringing those songs into concert halls. But De Bique and Jones presented something strictly original—a composition of Burleigh’s own: Five Songs of Laurence Hope. If these are Burleigh’s songs, who is Hope? She is the poet, the author of the texts. “Laurence Hope” was the pseudonym of Violet Nicolson, an Englishwoman who lived an interesting and turbulent life. It was good to get acquainted with these Burleigh/Hope songs.
Benjamin Britten, English to the core, nonetheless wrote a French cycle—at least a French-language cycle, Les Illuminations, texts by Rimbaud. The second half of this recital began with that cycle. De Bique was alive, animated—and free of intonation problems. I can’t say I understood the words, but that is not a capital offense.
The printed program ended with something really appetizing, and offbeat: Caribbean folk songs (five of them). I again thought of Leontyne Price. She sang recitals all over the world, usually ending the printed program with spirituals. Her attitude, as she once explained, was, “I have sung your songs; now you will hear mine.” It was a pleasure to hear the Caribbean songs out of Jeanine De Bique’s mouth.
Incidentally, two ladies, colorfully and beautifully dressed, were sitting next to me. They were from Trinidad. They told me they had come to New York just to hear Jeanine De Bique, and knew they would get tickets “if it was God’s will.” They beamed, and chuckled, during the folk songs.
Speaking to the audience, at encore time, De Bique explained that Warren Jones was her teacher, or coach, over many years at the Manhattan School of Music. The relationship between the two of them is obviously warm. There are many special relationships in the world—that between teacher and student, in whatever field, is one of them.
Zankel Hall looked a little like a nightclub or a jazz lounge. A piano was placed in the middle of the hall. Seats were arranged around it. Lights were very, very low. The pianist talked to the audience over a microphone attached to the piano (as I recall). He was cool, and cool-looking: a tall, slender guy who looked great in his suit. Kind of retro. When he spoke, he reminded me a little of Tom Lehrer.
He was Timo Andres, an American composer and pianist born in 1985. He was giving a recital of American music, including his own. Our program notes said, “The varied all-American program that Timo Andres has put together . . . reflects his omnivorous musical appetite as well as the country’s motley musical culture.” That is well put, in my opinion.
Andres began with a work of his own, Fiddlehead, composed last year. It is restless, kind of a toccata. It is minimalistic, slightly jazzy, smooth. He continued with a work by Robin Holcomb (born in 1954): Wherein Lies the Good. It is an example of simple, clear pianism—putting me in mind of Kabalevsky (Americanized). The composer incorporates what seemed to me a hymn, and one I should have been able to name. Her music has an Appalachian spareness and honesty. American, indeed.
The pianist went on to give us an Ellington/Strayhorn piece, arranged by him: “The Single Petal of a Rose,” from The Queen’s Suite. Then there was a piece by Gabriella Smith (b. 1991): Imaginary Pancake. Timo Andres explained the title. If I heard him right, he said something like this: “She has the pianist begin by playing at both extremes of the keyboard. This should make the pianist look flat, like a pancake. The thing is, I’m tall. I can play easily at both extremes. So the image doesn’t quite work with me.” Imaginary Pancake struck me as slightly minimalistic, slightly chaotic, slightly dreamy. I thought of a phrase from Aquarian days: “Lie back and see the colors.” Andres ended the first half of his program with more Ellington (without Strayhorn): Reflections in D (again, arranged by Andres).
His second half included two standards, or almost-standards: Copland’s Piano Sonata and Frederic Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. There was also more Ellington/Andres and an étude—the twentieth and last—by Philip Glass. (Incidentally, another devoted player of the Glass études is Víkingur Ólafsson.)
Sitting, and listening, I thought of my late friend and fellow critic Fred Kirshnit. When Zankel Hall opened in 2003, he complained about the loudness of the adjoining subway in the hall. (I agreed with him.) Some Carnegie officials said the subway made the hall “cool,” and “edgy,” and “urban.” No, said Fred—it’s simply a mistake, an error, that should be corrected. For once, the subway sort of went with the evening, when Timo Andres gave his recital: an evening of New York cool (and fine, earnest musicianship).
Anders Hillborg has written a second piano concerto. He is a Swede, about to turn seventy. His new work has a nickname: “The max Concerto.” Hillborg wrote the piece for Emanuel Ax, the veteran American pianist—whose friends call him “Manny.” So, “max” stands for “Manny Ax.” Hillborg has made the following comment about the nickname (the concerto’s): “It suggests—with the power of all caps—the exuberance and geniality of this outstanding pianist.”
That word “geniality” is interesting. “The max Concerto” is a friendly piece. It is cinematic, tuneful, kaleidoscopic. Sometimes declarative. It has stretches of what some term “sound design.” It has touches of minimalism, Ravel, jazz. The concerto is more “chordal,” or chord-filled, than most. When I heard it, I wondered, What does the sound and fury signify? Does the piece, for all its effects, stick to the ribs? I would like to hear it again (which is praise).
Emanuel Ax played this piece—his piece—with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Eun Sun Kim. He was at his best: seamless in passagework, musically sensible. Ax is worthy of a concerto or two or more. (And I doubt there is a better-loved figure in the music business.) By the way, he used sheet music—paper—and turned pages. That was really old-school. Today, most people use a tablet, and poke, rather than turn.
The composer, Anders Hillborg, was on hand to embrace the performers and bow. Seventy or not, he has a first-class mane of hair.