Spitball Army

It is Fall.  Autumn.  The temperature has cooled to a comfortable range between 70 and 85 degrees in the afternoons, and down to the 50s and 60s in the evenings.  The little Japanese maple tree in my front yard is beginning to show its fan of vibrant yellow leaves.  I have started trimming back the bushes and shrubbery around the house, after the tremendous growth spurt of the past summer.  I can bike around the neighborhood without becoming a humid, sweaty mess.  This was always my favorite time of the year in Massachusetts, and Fall in the deep South is no different (though less accentuated).  Soon comes the celebrated Shedding of the Leaves, and Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday).  And the musical order of the season?  CLASSICAL!

This morning, my radio alarm clock announced the arrival of a new day with the strains of a string quartet.  I lay in bed trying to identify whose quartet it was.  It sounded like Beethoven, perhaps even Brahms.  No, not Brahms, not sweeping and romantic enough for Brahms.  I kept thinking that the composer was Beethoven, but then there was something just beneath the surface of the music that wasn’t completely Beethoven-esque.  Yes, it had that Germanic classical-period sound, it was stormy and driving and its structure was formal, but it had an urgency that suggested an unpredictable outburst that could be right around the corner of the next bar.  This thrilling piece of music had my complete attention.  After it ended, the NPR announcer called it: the second string quartet of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, student of Mozart and Haydn, and contemporary of Beethoven.  Ahh, I thought, I was so close.  Those endless hours of study and listening weren’t all for naught.

The Fall/Classical season got off to a tremendous start for me two weekends ago.  The Alabama Symphony Orchestra’s opening concert featured the Brahms Violin Concerto and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.  The ASO’s conductor and music director obviously programmed this concert just for me, without knowing it, as the 7th is my favorite Beethoven symphony (really close to the 9th, but the 7th invariably wins in a nose-to-nose finish) and I do so love the Brahms concerto.  This is the time of year when I feel just as or more comfortable listening to pieces such as these – a Dvorak symphony, Baroque-and-earlier pieces for gamba and violin, anything by Beethoven – than the singer-songwriters or throwback rock-and-roll that tends to flow from my stereo during the spring and summer months.  I’ve been known to travel out-of-town to hear a classical performance once or twice throughout the Fall and Winter, though that is not as likely to happen this year (due to the current money crunch).

I awoke this morning with the renewal that comes from a solid 12-hour sleep that I felt was necessary to ward off the “crud” that I felt overtaking my body.  It seemed to mostly do the trick, and I hopped on the bike and pedaled over to the Crestwood Coffee Company for some Morning Joe and a read through the newspaper.  The New York Times Arts section fell open to the classical music section – imagine that! – and I lingered there for five to ten minutes, looking at the many concert offerings in the New York area.

The number of classical music offerings in New York is staggering! I imagine that, if you live there, you just get used to not being able to see and hear all of the events that you’d like to.  It’s kind of like attending a film festival where, invariably, the three films that you want to see the most are screening at the same time in different venues. To illustrate, here are some of the upcoming events that I’d be choosing between if I lived in the Big Apple:

• New York Philharmonic: Lorin Maazel conducts Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 3, and Bernard Rands’ Chains Like the Sea.  Sandra Church, flute soloist, Anna Rabinova, violin soloist, and Lionel Party, harpsichord soloist.  (1 and 2 October 2008)
• Mozart’s Don Giovanni:  Opera at The Met, featuring Erwin Schrott and Susan Graham.  (1, 4 and 10 October 2008)
• Pacifica Quartet: The first in a series of six concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, traversing the complete string quartets of Beethoven.  Future concerts in the series will be include performances by the Talich Quartet, the Borealis String Quartet, and the Artis Quartet (who will tackle the Grosse Fuge).  (2 October 2008)
• Ponchielli’s La Gioconda:  Opera at The Met, featuring Deborah Voigt, Olga Borodina and Ewa Podles.  (2, 6 and 9 October 2008)
• The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center:  Milhaud (La creation du monde for piano quintet), Boulez (Derive I for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and vibraphone), Ravel (Tzigane, rapsodie de concert for violin and piano), and Messiaen (Quartet for the End of Time).  Soloists include Gilbert Kalish and Wu Han (pianos), Daniel Hope (violin), and David Shifrin (clarinet).  (3 October 2008)
• American Symphony Orchestra:  Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys performed in a concert version, conducted by Leon Botstein.  (3 October 2008)
• Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor:  Opera at The Met.  (3 and 8 October 2008)
• Toronto Symphony Orchestra:  Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins (a concert performance) and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 “The Year 1905.”  Ute Lemper is the featured vocal soloist, and Peter Oundjian is conductor.  (4 October 2008)
• Richard Strauss’ Salome:  Opera at The Met, featuring Karita Mattila.  (4 and 7 October 2008)
• The Met Orchestra:  Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge (orchestrated), Messiaen’s Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, and Brahms’ violin concerto.  Conducted by James Levine, with Christian Tetzlaff as the violin soloist.  (5 October 2008)
• Inside Dvorak’s New World Symphony: Alec Baldwin hosts and narrates the surprising inside story behind the best-loved symphony ever composed in America, starting with a fascinating multimedia introduction and concluding with a powerful New York Philharmonic performance.  Featuring Kevin Deas (bass) and conducted by Marin Alsop.  (10 October 2008)

Good God!!

These are just some of the classical music happenings in the first ten days of October, starting off the classical season with a blast in what is, arguably, the busiest classical music city in America.  Arguably?  Because I am sure that Boston’s music and early music schedule is also just now approaching full bloom.  Not to mention what’s happening in Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, or in dozens and dozens of other communities across the country.

And, being Fall, the option of driving to the hills to pick apples is also an attractive one.  Driving, that is, with the windows or car top down, and Schumann’s piano quintet flowing from the dashboard stereo.

Here, in Birmingham, I will content myself with my ASO subscription, the occasional chamber music concert, and a seemingly endless stash of classical CDs that have accumulated in my house and, for the most part, have remained unplayed.

Until now.

[audio:Martha_Argerich_and_Friends___Schumann_Piano_Quintet_(3rd movement).mp3]
Robert Schumann: Piano Quintet in E flat major, Op. 44, (III. Scherzo. Molto vivace),
performed by Martha Argerich (piano), Dora Schwarzberg (violin), Lucy Hall (violin), Nobuko Imai (viola) and Mischa Maisky (cello)