形 毛骨悚然的!Over a month ago I went to a recital that I thought would be something out of the ordinary, but little more and it turned out to be one of the most thrilling musical experiences I’ve had. It was Christian Teztlaff standing alone under a spotlight on the Orchestra Hall stage in front of a darkened hall, playing the Bach's solo Sonatas and Partitas. You could have heard a pin drop.

Many people see these works as a great monument of the violin repertoire even though they haven't been played so long - maybe for 100 years. But they've always been something to look at with awe. They're not just a demonstration of greatness or of violin playing. Yes, it's an ornamental journey through sheer beauty, but it’s more than that.
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Naturally they have been played very differently by different players, but never had people dared to dance and to weep - until fortunately Harnoncourt, Gardiner and Norrington came along and we could discover that Bach's music is really about life and death. We can see this in all the Bach cantatas and indeed the Passions. So it's the perfect time for a violinist to play these pieces.

It’s the J.S. Bach you know, the master of the Cantatas and concertos. Yes, he's exactly the same person. But you can tell these partitas and sonatas had a very big place in his heart. And 1 think the reason he composed them for violin solo, something so unusual and different from the piano, is that it is even more intimate. The kind of "singing" Teztlaff digs out of the slow movements is closer to the heart than solo piano work. There are moments in the pieces which are so intimate that there's no room for reverence, the usual stumbling block with Bach.

Teztlaff began playing them as a full cycle 12 years or so ago, playing 1, 2, 3, then 4, 5,6 the next day, but not always with the same audience and the juxtaposition of the dark and the light was lost, so Teztlaff decided it had to be all six in one night. If you hear one you can admire it, but Bach wanted to say something very different.


What’s in my player now: Christian Tetzlaff
J. S. Bach: Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas, BWV1001 -06 Christian Tetzlaff vn Hänssler Classic® (2) CD98 250 (130' • DDD)

Superb! Supple and dextrous, Christian Tetzlaff finds plenty of grace and virtuosity in the Bach Sonatas and Partitas. There's the clean sound one often associates with period instruments (but actually he uses a modern instrument), but warmth too. There is precision, but also flexibility and passion. Name the best violinists alive, Vengarov, Hahn, Josefowitz, Mutter, Perlman, Thomas Zehetmair, Joshua Bell, technically Tetzlaff is any of their equal and lacks nothing in virtuoso excitement. These solo violin pieces sing, dance, and weep in way that’s entirely Teztlaff’s own. 形 本质.实质的;根本上的! Bach and violin fans will not want to miss this. And if you get a chance to hear him in person, go no matter what it costs, and fasten your seatbelt. If Glenn Gould had played the violin, this is how it would have sounded.

The baritone who forgot his pants, and other crazy classical music stories of 2009

News of the weird, from the classical music world: Conductor David Ott fell into an orchestra pit; composer Curtis Hughes wrote an opera about Sarah Palin; and baritone Bryn Terfel forgot his pants in 2009.

As 2009 slips away, it's once again time for ... the Classical Music Believe It or Not! And while the calendar marches toward 2010, may you enjoy the follies of the past year, with tidbits gleaned from actual news items, just as much as we've enjoyed collecting them for you. Here goes:

Leaping from the stage: It's been quite a year for spectacular stage accidents. Conductor David Ott survived a 14-foot fall at the University of West Florida in September, returning to the orchestra pit after a performance when the lights were off and plummeting into the basement below the pit. He miraculously avoided serious injuries.

Earlier, soprano Ana Maria Martinez fell headfirst into the orchestra pit during a performance of "Rusalka" at Britain's illustrious Glyndebourne Opera, landing on a luckless cellist. Martinez also suffered no ill effects.

Less fortunate, however, was mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, whose tumble at London's Royal Opera House during "The Barber of Seville" ended in a broken fibula. She gamely carried on to finish the performance, later continuing in a wheelchair and cast for the remaining shows.

Singing to the cows: Italian tenor Marcello Bedoni has been singing operatic selections to cows in Lancashire, England, on the theory that "soothing sounds or music can reduce stress" (according to the National Farmers' Union). Bedoni calls the cows "a great audience." Presumably they remember to shut off their cellphones beforehand.

Watch those batons: A 17-year-old California girl used her marching-band baton to beat off two muggers who grabbed her coat and demanded money several months ago. She punched one in the nose, kicked the other in the groin, and beat them both with her band baton before running away. You don't mess with the marching band.

Really Terrible Orchestra: You don't mess with the Really Terrible Orchestra, either, without incurring the wrath of founder (and novelist) Alexander McCall Smith. The Edinburgh-based orchestra, founded in 1995 and billed as the world's worst, has trademarked its name to fend off attempts by rival tribute orchestras to cash in on its reputation. The RTO claims its success is due to short performances and free wine for listeners. McCall Smith says, "It does not matter that on more than one occasion members of the orchestra have been discovered to be playing different pieces of music by different composers, at the same time. We are The Really Terrible Orchestra and we shall go on and on."

An opera about ... Sarah Palin? The much-parodied voice of Sarah Palin has inspired composer Curtis Hughes to write an opera ("Say It Ain't So, Joe"), for the Boston-based Guerilla Opera. Based on "the exact pitches that were spoken" during the Palin-Biden debates in last year's Presidential campaign, the opera also features Joe the Plumber, for whom Hughes says his "word-painting tends to get a little more crass." Hughes told one interviewer, "One of [Palin's] arias concludes with her informing the audience, 'I am your future.' I'd like to think that the music at this moment could be understood as either ominous or joyful, or perhaps both." Perhaps.

"Twitterdammerung": Yes, it's billed as "the first Twitter opera," premiered in September at London's Royal Opera House, based on some 900 tweets and predictably panned as "a cheap gimmick" — though one reviewer cited "humour by the bucket load." One can only imagine.

We can hardly wait: China is planning a new opera version of Marx's 1,000-page "Das Kapital," with an economist overseeing the project to "ensure that it remains intellectually respectful of Marxist doctrine." Count us in for opening night!

Another violin left in the cab: Psychologists might have a field day with the long list of major musicians who have left ultravaluable instruments behind in taxicabs. To that list we now add New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, who left the orchestra's 1727 Guarneri del Gesù violin in a New York taxi last February. The cabbie quickly arranged for the violin's return. Not to be outdone, South Korean-born virtuoso Hahn-Bin left his 18th-century Giovanni Francesco Pressenda violin in a Manhattan yellow cab after an August performance. Fortunately, the cab had a GPS tracker, and the instrument returned to Hahn-Bin, who cried, "My baby!"

The baritone forgets ... his pants?: Yes, noted baritone Bryn Terfel set out for the concert hall from his Seoul hotel wearing a pair of shorts, but forgetting to pack his concert trousers for the evening's performance last April. Arriving with just minutes to spare, and with no time to return to the hotel for his clothes, Terfel was saved by a speedy loan from a South Korean opera lover the same size as the 6'4" singer. Sort of gives a new meaning to the phrase, "Flying by the seat of one's pants."


The curse of the Ring: The Metropolitan Opera had its hands full this past spring with Wagner's four-opera epic, "The Ring of the Nibelung," when the company had to find three substitute singers for the key role of Brünnhilde. It also needed last-minute replacements for four other important roles, as well as a last-minute conductor when James Levine got sick.

Los Angeles also experienced unpleasant Ringing sensations, when the $32 million production suffered a computer glitch, causing a malfunction in the Nibelungs' cavern. And at Seattle Opera's "Ring," another computer problem twice delayed the start of scenes in the finale, "Götterdämmerung." Opera fans were heard to utter "Götterdämmerit."

Department of operatic excesses: A Berlin production of Gluck's "Armida" in April featured scenes of bondage, rape, simulated sex, murder, a live python and several naked bodybuilders. Meanwhile, over in Cologne, a third of the cast walked out of rehearsals for a violent staging of "Samson and Delilah," reportedly claiming that "the scenes of rape and massacre [were] making them sick." The Berlin patrons, accustomed to the outré, responded with "polite applause," according to news reports, but in Cologne many ticketholders wanted their money back.

Roll on, Beethoven: A Caltech computer-systems grad student named Virgil Griffith has used Facebook data to measure the musicians most often listed as a user's "favorite music" against the average SAT score for the school the user attended. At the top: Beethoven (average SAT score 1371, out of a possible 1600); at the bottom: Lil Wayne (889). Don't tell us you're surprised.

The hazards of teaching: Last February, a 13-year-old Italian schoolboy stabbed his violin teacher with a kitchen knife during a lesson at a middle school near Venice, leaving the knife embedded in the teacher's back when he ran away after the attack. Music teachers, it may be time for those Kevlar vests

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2010525937_weird20.html?cmpid=2628

The Score: Advice to Young Composers

形 好的! Back in October I was interviewed by Cornelius Dufallo, a fine violinist who recently performed a piece of mine. He sent me a list of questions, the last being, “Any advice for young composers?”

The question took me by surprise — wasn’t I a young composer, too? When did I make the transition to not-so-young composer? Every day I have moments when I feel like a young composer: I struggle with starting projects, experiment with unfamiliar techniques, and deal with interpersonal challenges. There are so many times when I feel like I lack a manual in my day-to-day life. How do I find the time to compose and still take care of all of the boring administrative tasks? What’s the best approach to take with a temperamental musician? Can the violinist really play a phrase that fast, or will his fingers turn into a tangle of scorched flesh? The occasional impossible aesthetic decision can seem easy in comparison. Truth is, if I had the answers to all of the questions, my life would be a lot less interesting. Looking for the answers and keeping an open mind is what keeps it exciting.

When I first moved to New York, a friend and colleague proudly announced to me that he no longer played experimental music. He was a great improviser who coaxed wild sounds out of his instrument, but he was content with where his work had led him, so he stopped exploring. I found it both funny and disturbing — here was a guy who was willing to get on stage and work his way through a strange vocabulary of very original sounds. Why would he give up experimenting? It convinced me to keep turning over rocks to see what kind of musical wildlife I could uncover in the dirt, and to avoid getting comfortable with any single approach or style. Sometimes it means experimenting with a new sound, technique, or combination of instruments, or investigating a way to express myself while writing for a more traditionally trained group of musicians. I’ve managed to strike a balance between having enough confidence in my own music to develop my own sound, but enough curiosity and restlessness to continue to change it. If there’s a formula to writing music, I haven’t found it, and I hope I never do.

Why would I want to hover between being a greenhorn and seasoned old hand? So I can retain the excitement and the willingness to make mistakes that come with youthful enthusiasm, and temper it with the knowledge, skills, and confidence that come with experience. As the decades pass, there’s nothing I’d like more than to be a young composer trapped inside the body of a grand old lady. So I try to keep these points in mind:

近义词 Always consider yourself a young composer. Throughout your life as a composer there will always be more to learn, more to explore, and more to write.

近义词Take your work seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Once you’ve recovered from the grand aesthetic statement you just made, make sure your music is actually playable. And, hopefully, readable. A sense of humor will help you get through difficult times, and could help deflect the fact that the pianist might have to grow a few extra fingers to play that epiphanal earth-shattering chord that you refuse to change. If you work with electronics, remain calm in the face of computer crashes. Better to distract the crowd with a joke then to show off your trembling hands when you fumble to re-boot your computer.

A few years ago I staged a site-specific performance of my factory-inspired piece “EWA7” to a packed house at the cavernous Brooklyn Anchorage. At the climax of the piece, my sampler died, and I suddenly felt like I was being sucked into a sonic vacuum. I cued my bandmates, Roger Kleier and Jim Pugliese, to keep going, regained my composure, and got my sampler up and running again. Good save — until the next climactic moment, when it crashed again.

Annie Gosfield performing in Merkin Concert Hall’s “Zoom: Composers Close Up” series earlier this year.It was nerve-wracking, annoying, and a little bit funny, but I managed to keep my cool, supported by two great improvisers who could turn on a dime. After the concert, an audience member told me his favorite dramatic moment was when the music built to a frenzy, and then the sampler suddenly dropped to nothing. I chalked it up to a happy accident and worked it into future performances of the piece.

Details count. I’ve put a lot of time into developing some very noisy pieces. Although your ultimate goal may be something that sounds fast and dirty, there is almost always room for improvement as you refine your sounds, your scores, or your techniques.

Be willing to put yourself and your music on the line. If you don’t believe in your music, nobody else will. If you’re trying something new, be prepared for those lonely times when you may be the only one who believes in your work. At least you’ll have yourself — buy yourself a drink and be good company.

近义词 Avoid well-worn paths. The world of “new music” is not the esoteric, marginalized place that it used to be. Now that there are more composers who have actually found some success and made some money, there is a clearer career path. Avoid that path — you already know where it leads. The composers you admire didn’t get where they are by imitating others. Inspiration and influence are a far cry from imitation, so listen, observe, and then dig deeper to find your own music.

近义词 Don’t fear rejection. Hats off to you if you annoy some of your audience — you may actually be trying something new. When I ask other musicians “How was your gig?” the answer I hear more and more frequently is “Everybody loved it”. When did that become socially acceptable? Is this the result of a culture in which every child gets a trophy? New music shouldn’t be a popularity contest — that’s why god gave us pop music (unless the devil did.). If everybody actually did love your concert, appreciate the accolades, but consider how your work did or didn’t challenge yourself and your audience. Maybe they actually did love it because it was something new, maybe your audience is made up of supportive friends, or maybe that open bar did the trick.

Don’t assume you know what’s accessible to the audience and what isn’t. I haven’t met an audience member yet who praised a concert for its watered down music and rehashed ideas. In spite of (and maybe in response to) the expanding reach of mainstream media, there is a growing audience of people looking for challenging, unfamiliar new music. It’s your job to challenge them.

If you chose to study composition, spend your time in school studying what you can’t learn in a club or a garage. If all you really want to do is play in a band, you’ll learn more playing in a club than you ever would in a classroom. Plus you’ll get to drink beer. If you want to learn skills geared towards notated music, or want to have access to say, a school orchestra, and a teacher that has mastered orchestration, that’s the time to rack up those tuition bills. If you’re interested in electronics, and having access to advanced technical facilities, consider how much you can learn using your own computer and a manual, and get a head start. You’ll probably come up with more original ideas if you begin by teaching yourself.

When I was studying music, I found all of the emphasis on putting together a proper score tedious. Ear training drove me crazy. When I started playing in bands and improvising, I was ready to kiss all of that goodbye. I wouldn’t have dreamed that the music I blasted through with my own band would eventually wind up on paper. Having the skills to notate my own music meant that my own personal noisy style could be translated to a whole world of musicians who wouldn’t be able to play it otherwise. By combining traditional notation with open sections and solos, I could clearly communicate a piece to musicians anywhere in the world without having to be there to lead them through a rehearsal.

Make sure you’re always doing some work that is yours and yours alone — not composed for the approval of teachers or colleagues. There’s a chasm between writing in school and writing in the real world. Regardless of what you’re doing in school, you should always write something that’s not subject to grades. You may learn a lot comparing what you write for yourself to write for others. Guidance can be helpful at times, but I have never found authority to inspire creativity. When I was studying composition at U.S.C., I would sneak into the Arnold Schoenberg Institute after hours to rehearse. It gave me access to a stage and a P.A. without having to run my music past my teachers, so I could experiment with my own band and work with other improvisers. It was a very conservative environment, so it was especially fun to sneak around, another great motivating factor that got me started as a composer/performer/improviser.

Never discount the power of the library. Scores and recordings hold knowledge that can lead you down paths you may not find elsewhere. Consider the score your road map, or blueprint, and see how others constructed music.

近义词 Remain curious and ask questions. Musicians are your best resource, and they love to show you what they can (and can’t) do. I always stay in close contact with the musicians for whom I’m writing, and I’m never afraid to ask questions. Ultimately we all learn from a new piece. A commission is a great excuse to get the process started — the performer will share the techniques that he or she has developed over the years, and get a better piece in the end. I’ve been fortunate to work closely on new commissions with Joan Jeanrenaud, Felix Fan, Lisa Moore, David Cossin, Blair McMillen, George Kentros, Marco Cappelli, and many others, all masters of their instruments. If you’re just starting out, keep an open mind about commissioning fees — just get the piece written.

Allow yourself to be led down the garden path. Your mistakes may teach you more than your neatly constructed pieces. I hear the complaint “I didn’t get it” too often. It’s music, you don’t always have to get it. It’s not like piloting a jet or performing brain surgery: if you experiment, nobody will die in a terrible accident. There doesn’t always have to be a narrative thread or a familiar reference in music, it’s one of the few disciplines in which you can lose yourself, and the sensory experience in itself can be something entirely new.

Make music, and make music happen. The more you write, play, improvise, listen to, and think about music, the better. If your grand opus isn’t being premiered by the New York Philharmonic, don’t despair. Set up a solo gig at a local venue and play your own music. Build a community of musicians and start your own ensemble, band or collective and learn from each other. Take advantage of a good-news-bad-news situation: the strict boundaries between musical genres are crumbling, but performance opportunities are decreasing. Be creative, anything can happen anywhere. Support live music and try to get to know artists that you admire. Before I moved to New York, I lived in Los Angeles, where I volunteered at organizations that booked new music and I helped bring in many improvisers and new music luminaries from New York. It was a great way to get to know people, and learn more about the music. Seeing my heroes asleep on my couch (or floor) destroyed any romantic notions I had about being an active musician in this scene. By the time I moved to New York, I was already friendly with many of the musicians I admired most.

I’ve toured the world, taught in universities, played in dives, factories, and concert halls, and recorded three CD’s under my own name. All of this experience has made me a better composer, but the really tough artistic challenges have kept it exciting.

I hope each generation brings in a new crop of composers that are ready to annoy the last generation. And I hope I’m there in decades to come, as I become a young composer trapped inside the body of a grand old lady, still ready to come out fighting. 好运气！

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/the-score-advice-to-young-composers/

Annie Gosfield composes music often inspired by “non-musical” sounds. Her most recent CD, “Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites,” features satellite transmissions, factory noises and a string quartet. She has held the Darius Milhaud chair of composition at Mills College, taught at Princeton University and California Institute of the Arts and was guest composer at The Eastman School. Her current projects include a new CD for Tzadik, a piece based on the radio transmissions of the Danish resistance, and a cello concerto. Her Web site is AnnieGosfield.com

Good News: Yo-Yo Ma coming to Chicago Symphony Orchestra for three-year residency

形 可怕的;厉害的;非常的!!!According to Chicago’s critic Andrew Patner, Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director designate Riccardo Muti took a giant step toward realizing his goals of connecting the CSO with wider audiences and young people of all backgrounds by tapping cellist Yo-Yo Ma, one of the world’s best known musicians and most tireless classical music advocates, for a new position in the orchestra’s artistic and educational leadership.

Just hours before being named Musician of the Year by Musical America at a Lincoln Center event here, Muti announced Monday afternoon that Ma would begin a three-year term next month as the CSO’s first Judson and Joyce Green creative consultant, working with the orchestra and its education programs in almost every area from classrooms to community centers and juvenile detention facilities to Orchestra Hall itself.

Yo-Yo Ma will begin a three-year residency next season with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

“Yo-Yo and I have played together many times for so many years,” Muti said in an interview Monday. “We have always found our collaboration a pleasure and an easy dialogue.

“But perhaps even more importantly, we have the same idea that merely giving concerts and making music is not enough. In a world that is increasingly complex, we need to tear down artificial walls and bring music to a wider array of people and bring those people and communities to music.”

A performer and educator who circles the world commanding top fees and selling out halls wherever he appears, Ma said, “I have a deep affection for Chicago. The chance to work with Maestro Muti in a city that was the culmination of so much of my 10 years of work on the Silk Road Project and which is in many ways its own multi-ethnic, multigenerational and multi-experiential cultural capital is a great honor and very exciting.”

The creative consultant position brings together Muti’s experiences with his Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra in Italy and international outreach efforts, Ma’s work connecting the music of Central Asia’s Silk Road with the West and the Far East, and the CSO’s own award-winning programs under the umbrella of its Institute for Learning Access and Training.

In addition to helping to develop and advance existing CSO education programs, Ma will work with multiple new aspects of its institute, including a series for pre-schoolers, intensive workshops for high school and college-age musicians and programs in collaboration with Muti for incarcerated and at-risk youth.Ma also will lead Symphony Center Presents thematic chamber music residencies in engaging fellow international artists with college and pre-college-age musicians.

Details of how and where Ma spends his time will be worked out as his appointment begins. “We have to rehearse,” Ma, 54, said. “As in rehearsing music, you read passages, find new ways, try different gestures. And we have to learn about different communities — as we did along the Silk Road — by meeting people as guests and not as hosts, and truly participating in an exchange with them.”

“Chicago is a great engine, for the country and the world,” said Muti, 68. “And it is a cultural engine as well. Together with the management and staff and the orchestra itself, Yo-Yo and I look forward to driving this to new places and in new ways.”

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/1938846,yo-yo-ma-chicago-symphony-orchestra-121409.article