Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert

Timothy Hagen (Flute) and Ben Corbin (Piano) – Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert – Chicago Cultural Center – November 20, 2019

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Midway through a day that included leading a class on cheating in baseball (more on that another time), a fountain-lighting ceremony with singing in Washington Square Park, and a musical comedy that’s Duck Soup meets Of Thee I Sing (see piece on Call Me Madam), I listened to a lovely concert by Hagen and Corbin, though I found myself slightly distracted from the music itself.

I became focused on (read obsessed by) the flow of Corbin’s hands on the piano, something I have struggled with (along with avoiding dangling prepositions). My curiosity thus led me to a piano-technique website that discusses hand, finger and body motions in sufficient detail to keep me occupied through the winter.

It also reminded me of the well-known fact that a difficult part of acting is what to do with your hands. I found an acting coach’s website that says it best.

It seems that when we act, the hands are destined to flop around like a hyperactive T-Rex.
Or if they are not busy doing dinosaur impersonations, they are perhaps engaged in:
• Penguining (Flapping the arms at the sides.)
• Waitressing (Arms in a v-shape, like a waiter carrying plates.)
• The ForkLift (as above but straight out)

The other distractions were the guy behind me who spent five minutes fumbling around with batteries he was trying to insert into a camera, and a woman’s cell phone that rang loudly for an interminable amount of time (okay, maybe 15 seconds), as she fumbled to remove it from her purse and tried to remember how to turn it off. If not so rude, or maybe because of that, it might have made an amusing SNL skit, as the ring was musical and ended almost in synch with the performance. I couldn’t help but think, however, that it needed more cow bell.

 

Diderot String Quartet with Harry Bicket, Harpsichord – Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts – Chicago Cultural Center – March 13, 2019

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Lovely concert. Shouldn’t that be enough? No, because I was sitting in the front row, only a few feet from the performers. So I couldn’t help but notice that the members of the quartet weren’t using chin rests or shoulder pads and that something seemed different about their bows. Can of worms!

Going in, the only thing I knew about violins was what Emily Litella taught me about them on Weekend Update.

Now, having researched the issues, I understand that a baroque bow has a slightly different curvature than a modern bow.  So when it’s bent, it’s baroque, not broke.

Shoulder pads, while useful, can be problematic, because of several issues related to proper fitting. I don’t mean the kind of shoulder pads that Joan Crawford made famous. I mean the kind that attach to the stringed instrument to keep it stable.

Chin rests, which protect the instrument’s varnish and provide a secure and comfortable place for the jaw, also must be properly fitted.  A proper chin piece can help the musician play with a proud sternum, which is apparently a thing among violinists.

So why weren’t these musicians using chin rests? As Pee Wee Herman so famously said in his Big Adventure, “everyone I know has a big but. . . . let’s talk about your big but.”

The big but for chin rests is in regard to baroque violins, which are different in several ways from their more modern counterparts, in particular in regard to the tailpiece, which I knew was a part of a car, but had no idea was also a part of a violin.

Coincidentally, I found a video that discussed baroque violins and chin rests in terms of downshifts and upshifts, which I also knew related to cars, but not violins.

Next thing you know, I’ll discover an organization of mothers against drunk violin playing.

 

 

Chen Family Quartet, Fourth Presbyterian Church, January 11, 2019; Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Symphony Hall, January 15, 2019; Phillppe Quint, Violin and Marta Aznavoorian, Piano, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert, Chicago Cultural Center, January 16, 2019

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While others listening to classical music may try to appreciate its finer points or focus on getting inside the composer’s head, I just like the way it sounds, which leaves my brain free to wander during concerts.

Some day I might pick up a copy of Classical Music for Dummies, cowritten by David Pogue, whom I usually only think about as Techno Claus on CBS Sunday Morning, when I think about him at all, but who also is a monthly columnist for Scientific American.

But, until then, I think about things like the different shades of varnish on the cellos used in the Chicago Civic Orchestra’s terrific concert, which led me to an applied physics article on ‘the importance of the vibro-mechanical properties of varnish, its chemical composition, thickness and penetration into wood.”

It wasn’t so much during Chicago Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Robert Chen’s brilliant violin solo at Fourth Presbyterian Church, but rather after, that I began thinking about the space itself, when Rush Hour Concerts Artistic Director Anthony Devroye, who filled in on viola with the Chen Family Quartet that day told a couple of us who had trouble seeing from the back that the quartet didn’t use the stage because the asymmetrically curved wall behind it caused acoustic problems – more science.

No science entered my head during the Dame Myra Hess concert, which featured the music of Charlie Chaplin. Quint and Aznavoorian closed with Chaplin’s Smile, from Modern Times, which reminded me of Jimmy Durante singing Make Someone Happy at the end of Sleepless in Seattle, which reminded me of its screenwriter and director Nora Ephron, who was an answer on Jeopardy this week.

In the immortal words of The Statler Brothers’ classic (not classical) Flowers on the Wall (I counted 12 on my guest bathroom wall), “Now don’t tell me I’ve nothin’ to do.”

 

Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert – Chicago Cultural Center – November 28, 2018

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I missed Saint-Saens’ Romance. Op. 36, but got to the hall in time to hear sustained applause for Sophia Bacelar (cello) and Noreen Cassidy-Polera (piano), which got me thinking about the dynamics of audience applause. I found a study that spoke of it in terms of a disease, saying that “Individuals’ probability of starting clapping increased in proportion to the number of other audience members already ‘infected’ by this social contagion, regardless of their spatial proximity. The cessation of applause is similarly socially mediated, but is to a lesser degree controlled by the reluctance of individuals to clap too many times.”

Midway through the first movement of the second piece, Rachmaninoff’s Sonata in G Minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19, paramedics from the Chicago Fire Department showed up with a wheeled emergency stretcher, which they pushed up the middle aisle to a row near the front, where they loaded a man onto it, then reversed their course, pushed the cart back onto the elevator, and disappeared, all silently, in a matter of moments, and without causing the slightest interruption to the musicians, neither of whom lost concentration or looked up, perhaps so focused as to be unaware of what was transpiring 10 to 15 feet in front of them. Brava!

As for the man who was removed, from a distance he didn’t appear to be in any great discomfort. Perhaps he just needed a ride to a meeting (he had a briefcase with him) or perhaps, because I had arrived a few minutes late, I was unknowingly in the middle of the filming of an episode of Chicago Fire.

Or, as the sonata was, according to the program notes, among the first of Rachmaninov’s major pieces after he went through hypnotherapy to overcome writer’s block, perhaps the music itself has hypnotic qualities, and there were no paramedics. Is that Rod Serling I see in the corner?

Marianna Prjevalskaya (piano) and Tomer Gewirtzman (piano) – Chicago Cultural Center – April 11 and 25, 2018

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As usual, the performances at the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts were excellent. For Prjevalskaya’s performance I was seated behind her and paid particular attention to her movements, partly because I forgot my glasses and therefore couldn’t sit there reading the program or the news alerts on my phone (on silent) while she was playing. In any event, the way she swayed her body and bent her elbows to get her hands into the best position at all times was instructive.

In regard to reading the program, three things jumped out at me at Gewirtzman’s performance (for which I had my glasses). First, there were no program notes. They were replaced by an upcoming concerts page. I like having program notes in front of me during the performance (even when I make fun of them – see my April 4 blog), though I admit I don’t know what’s involved in producing them. Are there canned notes available somewhere for oft-played pieces (that weren’t available for Gewirtzman’s)? Or does someone write them up anew each time (and was that person on vacation)? I can live without a description of the music, but like having information about the composer and the time frame of and backdrop for the composition. Such a reduced note would be easier to produce (I presume) and would still leave room for an upcoming concerts schedule.

The second thing I noticed was that Gewirtzman served in the Israeli Defense Forces “Outstanding Musician” Program. That led me to finding an article about that program (https://www.israel21c.org/making-music-in-the-military/). Interesting stuff.

The third thing had to do with descriptions of movements. One that Gewirtzman played was shown as andante con espressione (at a walking pace, with feeling – why would you ever play without feeling?). There are apparently at least 20 basic tempos, and an greater number of mood markings (https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Tempo.html). It makes my head spin, allegrissimo.

Hee-Young Lim (cello) and Kuang-Hao Huang (Piano) – Chicago Cultural Center – April 4, 2018

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For the first time at any of the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts I have attended, some people, despite the caution in the printed program, applauded between movements, in this case after the second movement of Shostakovich’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Minor. I can’t say I blame them for their enthusiasm.

The allegro movement featured a rousing section of head bobbing and resulting hair tossing by Lim as she poured all her considerable talent and energy into rapid bowing and fingering in a section of the music accurately described in the program as “churning cello accompaniment.” I think Lim may have been getting as good a workout as I did in this morning’s Pilates class.

As I read the program description, it reminded me of a wine review. Compare “aromas of rich dark currants, nectarine skins, and gushing blackberry, but lots of fragrant tobacco, rich soil, white flowers, and smashed minerals; medium-bodied and saucy but racy acidity that stabilizes the wine nicely with the robust tannins” with “after a repeated note codetta, the exposition is repeated; then the development section commences with an impulsive discussion of the first theme, ominously underpinned by the repeated-note idea in the piano.”

The program also noted that the piece by Offenbach was dedicated to Arsène Houssaye, like I would know who that is. (He turns out to be a French novelist, poet and man of letters, which I believe my blog now makes me.)

After watching Lim and Huang walk off stage and back on between selections, I finally got around to searching for a satisfying answer as to why classical musicians do this. I found a good discussion on violinist.com.

The best answer for me was that you don’t want to be onstage when people stop clapping. So, musicians finish, bow, acknowledge the audience, and exit gracefully, which gives the audience a chance to stop clapping without being rude. One other possible explanation related to the Weak Bladder Marathon Highlights.

Rachel Lee Priday (violin) and David Kaplan (piano) – Chicago Cultural Center – March 21, 2018

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As promoted (and mentioned in last week’s blog), this concert was streamed live on Facebook, in furtherance of which cameras were positioned around the room, but no camera operators, not even robotic ones as has been the trend in television for some time (see https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/823/cost-cutting-boosts-the-use-of-robots-in-television-studios).

This wasn’t a basketball game, where the camera has to follow the action. Here there was static action. Okay, that’s a contradiction (though I like the way it sounds). I mean the musicians didn’t run or jump around the room, but their fingers, hands, and arms moved, and quite skillfully I might add, magically creating music were there had been none (only notes on paper), as beautiful as a three on two fast break ending in a thunderous dunk or a last second Hail Mary (or in Loyola’s case, hail 98-year-old Sister Jean Dolores-Schmidt) shot that drives another nail into my March Madness bracket coffin.

This week I went back to sitting on stage left, concerned that last week’s sheet music incident (see blog on Patrycja Likos and Yana Reznik) may somehow have been my fault, caused by my having sat stage right for a change. Moving back was the first step in my attempt to apply the scientific method to determine causation.

The Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts are produced by the International Music Foundation. Following the concert, I introduced myself to the foundation’s Executive Director, who, I assume, in the spirit of P.T. Barnum (there’s no such thing as bad publicity) and Oscar Wilde (the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about) welcomed the idea of my continuing to blog about the concerts, which is what I do. So here I am.

Patrycja Likos (Cello) and Yana Reznik (Piano) – Chicago Cultural Center – March 14, 2018

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Just when I thought I might not have anything more to write about the weekly Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, a previously unseen episode of Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows broke out part way through today’s performance.

The first piece went smoothly, as did the beginning of the second. Then Reznik reached up with one hand and made a minor adjustment to the way the pages were sitting on the piano’s music stand (cause or effect, I don’t know) and then, as the page turner executed his next maneuver, the pages starting unraveling every which way, fanning out in a slapstick fashion that seemed likely to bring the performance to a crashing halt. But, as the page turner tried to restore order, sprawling akimbo like a man playing Twister, Reznik, contorting her neck to the side to read a sheet of music that was now at a 45-degree angle, played on, amazingly, seemingly flawlessly.

The fuss was such that Likos turned her head around, while also not missing a beat, and looked to see what mayhem was taking place behind her. Then, after what was probably at most 10 seconds, but seemed like an eternity, someone from the front row of the audience rose up and came to the rescue, getting the sheets under control on the right side of the piano as the page turner held up his end on the left. The audience then held its collective breath until the end of the piece.

I have seen Reznik before and she is wonderful (as is Likos), but this performance was above and beyond. How does one prepare for such mishaps? It made me think about Tiger Woods and how his father used to scream in Tiger’s backswing to enure him to the distractions he might experience on the PGA tour.

I have been asked on occasion to inform readers about future events. This is the perfect opportunity to let everyone know that next week’s concert will be streamed live on Facebook. If you can’t make it in person, you might want to check out the broadcast. Who knows, perhaps an episode of McHale’s Navy will break out during the performance.

Narek Hakhnazaryan (cello) and Noreen Cassidy-Polera (piano) – Chicago Cultural Center – February 21, 2018

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Narek and Noreen beautifully played several selections, including one by Robert Schumann, who, according to the program, lived to be 146 years old (1810-1956). Although I know that listening to music is said to provide numerous health benefits, I was pretty sure that his date of death was a typo (it should have been 1856).

Of the Dame Myra Hess concerts I have attended, this was the first time a pianist had a page-turner. (I guess the previous musicians had better memories.) I noted that the page-turner sat on the pianist’s left (upstage, not blocking the audience’s view) and used his left hand, crossing over his body, to accomplish his task. For those looking for a “nerve-wracking” way to see concerts for free, I recommend reading a blog about the fine art of page-turning, which says that the left hand should be used (why?), but shows a picture of someone using her right hand (if I know my left from my right).

Narrow and Noreen (but not the unknown, uncredited, unappreciated(?) page-turner) briefly left the stage after each of the first two pieces. Is this to milk more applause? Or stretch legs? Or clear heads? Or make sure flies aren’t open? (see my blog on Franklinland)

As the music proceeded, I gazed around the room and made note of the famous names carved into the ceiling arches, which included Shakspere (sic – spell check fought me on this one). According to Wikipedia, “(I)n the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling “Shakspere”, as used in the poet’s own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was the most authentic version.” So why did it get changed after that? Four hundred years from now will historians change the spelling of my name? (This assumes that someday I will be known as the Bard of Blog.)

Jasmin Arakawa – Chicago Cultural Center – February 14, 2018

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In case you haven’t noticed, each time I go to one of the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts I try to focus on something different, in addition to the music. This week, I’d like to report that Preston Bradley Hall was adorned with Mardi Gras decorations, but, alas, it was not.

I was sitting stage left. The piano is always set up so that the pianist is facing that direction, something I hadn’t thought about before (I must have been preoccupied with world peace or quantum theory), but which makes obvious sense (doh) given the construction of a grand piano (not really an issue with my digital keyboard).

With that weight lifted from my mind, I reflected on the advantages of sitting stage left. Sure, I couldn’t see Ms. Arakawa’s hands move rapidly and flawlessly across the keys, but, because so many others wanted that experience, I had a greater choice of seats on my side, was able to sit on an aisle, with no one next to me, and, in the middle of this horrible flu season, had fewer people around me coughing (I didn’t bring a flu mask, though I spotted someone else wearing one).

When Ms. Arakawa walked out at the beginning of the concert, she just sat down and started playing. Pianists, unlike musicians playing other instruments, don’t fiddle on stage with strings (that would be amusing – I wonder if Victor Borge ever did it) or wait for someone with an oboe in the audience to give them an A (I looked, but didn’t spot one).

She played some Liszt, Haydn and a couple other dead guys I never heard of before (Mompou and Francaix). Francaix was quoted in the program as having quoted French writer Nicolas Chamfort in saying: “When on the stage, if you are a little of a charlatan, the crowd will lapidate you.” I’m happy to report that Ms. Arakawa was not lapidated at any time during her performance.