First thing tomorrow I’m going to start writing about my
current, and most exciting long-range project — I’m preparing to play and
record my complete works for solo piano. This will be the focus of this blog
for the next four years. Not my exclusive topic, to be sure. There are too many
interesting things to write about. But I want to get my thoughts about the
piano, and my contribution to its literature, down on paper, at least in
cyberspace!
But first a comment on a subject Mary Jane Leach raised on
Facebook. I find Facebook a remarkably stimulating arena of ideas about all
sorts of things — politics, the state of American culture, how our friends
overseas regard our fair country, how my relatives are getting on, who’s
getting married, who’s had a baby, etc. But above all I enjoy posts about
music.
On July 11th I visited Tanglewood and saw a semistaged
concert version of The Great Gatsby
by John Harbison. I had seen the premiere of the piece at the Met years ago,
and had the privilege of hearing the composer speak on this opera, and his
intentions to revise it, at Yale, shortly after the first production. Mary Jane
reviewed the Tanglewood performance by Emmanuel Music in the Times Union, the
newspaper serving the greater Albany (NY) area. Here’s the link:
Her Facebook post was an invitation to compare what she had
written about John’s opera with what Zachary Woolfe had written in The New York Times:
If you ever wondered about what actually happened somewhere,
and who’s telling the truth about what, there is no more perplexing field of
enquiry than music reviews. Here’s what was said, back and forth, on Facebook.
I’ll identify Mary Jane as MJL; I’m NB; another relevant comment shall remain
anonymous. Call this writer SE (Somebody Else). Since the exchange can be
viewed by any of our thousand-plus friends, I don’t see any problem with
repeating it here, slightly edited and abbreviated.
MJL: After reading the
review of Gatsby in the Times, I began to wonder if Zachary Woolfe and I had
seen the same thing.
NB: Hi Mary Jane. I was
at Tanglewood. I saw the opera you saw, not the one Zachary saw. Enjoyed it
very much.
MJL:
The Times makes it sound as if it was a disaster — pretty mean spirited.
Granted there were flaws, but there still was a lot to enjoy.
NB:
The good far outweighs the not-so-good in The Great Gatsby and none of it is bad. I would go see it again,
for sure.
SE: I saw it at the Met. Not perfect,
needed to be cut by about 45 minutes, which I heard he subsequently did. The
music, when you focused on it qua music, was amazing.
MJL:
Agreed — Woolfe seemed needlessly hostile in his review, since there
were many wonderful moments.
NB:
The NYT reviewer didn't get it. MJL got it. JH's opera is a subtle
piece. It brings you in stage by stage, and then proceeds to a very satisfying
conclusion, after you're totally on board. Not to everyone's taste, I know, but
I enjoyed it immensely. As far as being "moved" by the piece, it's a
contemplative take on the subject matter. A great deal to ponder, a great deal
to admire, very little emotional manipulation.
I’d like to add a word of praise for
the orchestration, which is uniformly good and sometimes thrilling. There is
one special effect that is dazzling and not mentioned in either of the two
reviews. When Harbison makes a transition into the party scenes, he does it by
means of a clever and quite well-calculated spatial move. The stage band (that
is, the jazz instruments playing at the parties) is at the back of the
orchestra. The chorus, who sing flapperesque pop music and gossip about Gatsby,
are against the upstage wall in a line. The jazzers are immediately in front of
them. The orchestral music, which is never pop, never jazz, fades out by
degrees, basically moving the sound from downstage to center stage to stage
rear. As the symphonic music fades out (by stopping) the jazz fades in (beginning
by degrees). As far as I could hear, the cessation of symphony sound spatially
was quite strict — first the violins were out, then the cellos, then the other
strings, then the winds and brass by degrees, as one became aware of the banjo
and piano and the other members of the band. It worked like a charm!
The
Great Gatsby is not going to replace Don Giovanni on the stages of the world,
but I for one couldn’t care less. We need to think less about what pieces are not and far more about what they are.
What this opera is, as I said first on Facebook, is a contemplative take
on the subject matter. We are invited to ponder the story of Gatsby and its
implications. We are invited to listen to conversations and consider their
nuances. The orchestra takes us on a couple of wild rides. This is a drama that
takes place in the music, and inside the mind of the characters, far more than
it takes place through the action. Indeed, the most dramatic events take place
offstage, and are only referred to in passing.
The notion of introverted opera is not
unique. Several come to mind. Pelléas et
Mélisande (an extreme case), Eugene
Onegin (which has the most beautiful sung conversations I know of in all of
opera) and of course Tristan und Isolde.
John Harbison is in very good company.
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