Hi all! Tonight’s (Saturday 2/23/13) encore was Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 6.
See you tomorrow!
Liz Stover
Associate Programming Manager, UMS

I have a question – During the Rite of Spring, two of the French horn players switched to other instruments that I couldn’t identify. They looked smaller than euphoniums but had upward facing bells. Can someone identify what they were?

Agreed! I’m less worried these days about a cell phone going off – although that would be a nuisance — than about the uninhibited trumpet coughs from all sides. How’s about an announcement at the start, UMS, about manners in a concert hall?

Really enjoyed the concert, I second that this would be a great concert during the summer and outdoors!

Branding

Yesterday I heard Brahms’s German Requiem in a superb performance by the UMS Choral Union and the Detroit Symphony. In a warmup interview on WJR, I’d heard Jerry Blackstone, who conducts the Choral Union, compare Brahms to a “well-made German car,” and listening to yesterday’s concert, I realized he’s right. Even my little Passat has a weight and sturdiness—a gravitas, if you will—that Japanese and American cars lack, and there’s more than a touch of that same sobriety and earnestness to Brahms’s magisterial rumination on death.
All of which got me to thinking about renegades. Because I can’t quite conceive of anyone using the term to describe Brahms, with his grandfatherly beard and girth, his sturdy repertoire. Which begs the question: why Beethoven and not Brahms? Could it be the hair?
Last week’s concert by the Hagen Quartet—an exquisite rendition of three Beethoven quartets, plus a mysterious, and sublime, encore that even my musicologist husband can’t pinpoint, though he’s sure it’s late Haydn—was listed as part of UMS’s “renegade” series. On the one hand it makes all kinds of sense (Beethoven as the ultimate maverick, revolutionary, tormented genius, what-have-you), but on the other it gets you wondering what the term signifies. Or rather, what kinds of expectations it sets up in an audience? If you listen to Beethoven as Beethoven, is this a different experience from listening to him as a “change-agent” or renegade? Do you hear differently? Focus on different facets of the work? Think differently as you’re experiencing the music? Are you more aware of historical context? Do you say to yourself, for instance, “My, that Beethoven’s adventurous. So much more interesting than this Brahms guys who’s kind of predictable, like my Volkswagen.”
A related question came up at last week’s Night School. Can a contemporary artist like Wayne McGregor truly merit the name “renegade,” and if so, what happens to him and his work? Does McGregor now feel the need to live up to that role? Does he change his work so that it pushes the bounds of the radical in ways that may be less genuine than if he were simply pursuing his work as before? What happens to his perception of himself? As someone asked on Monday night, “What do you do when you’re hired to break the mold?”
The commodification of “maverick”: it seems worth revisiting the idea as we move forward with this series and contemplate the possibility of more such series in the future. UM is big into branding these days, and maybe UMS is too. Maybe it’s a helpful thing. But I wonder if this kind of slogan might not be a bit too glib. At the very least, it seems worth asking to whom, and to what effect, the term should be applied.

Me too Music Lover….me too.
I am fascinated by the risk that they take with color and timbre…completely unvibrated sound one moment…fully vibrated the next…all dispatched to highlight the theater within the music. Of course, when you play this game you are walking the line regarding intonation….they sometimes missed the mark but I will take the excitement that this approach produces any day…even if there are some “pitchy” moments…if it means that I get to hear music making like we heard last night.

More fun than two spoons and a quart of Hagen Das! The Monday Night School has been helpful in understanding the shows this semester. Thanks to the dept. Musicology for the pro bono work. Best of all the roads were fine when we got out. Beethoven Rules!!

I understand the historical significance and abnormality of Gesualdo, but when you line him up next to the other composers on the program, the difference is lost on my modern ear. It is similar to looking at a number of rooms that are painted white and then saying, “wow…look at that beige one.”

I enjoyed the music and the venue (and the lighting…).

The concert with the Talis Scholars was a unique concert in the Maverick and Renegade Series at UMS. It was that because the music we heard was by far the oldest music in this concert row. The place in which the event took place was the catholic church. This place is the best place this music can actually performed as all the music stems from catholic composers. One thing I am thinking could have been deliberated: to turn of lights so that the audience sits in the dark so that oneself is alone with the music. This would have given me a more intense experience I think. The performernce was very clear and I could hear the phrasing very clearly. It was a very satiesfying evening as a whole.

I just got back from the performance-I definitely enjoyed it, it was so interesting to watch!

The lighting, music, and movement worked together to create a fairly surreal effect. The music seemed to have a machine or engine like steady quality for much of the piece, but also with a heartbeat like bass. The movement was sometimes creepily unnatural looking, as it pushed the boundaries of what the body is capable of and what we typically do with it. I noticed especially a lot of “limb” in the dance.

What interested me was the contrasts between motion and sudden stillness, bodies in silhouette and in light, in full extension and contraction, and between a single dancer and many dancers. I haven’t seen a lot of dance, and I was intrigued by how these details could be used on stage to create different effects.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Certainly, the work succeeded at getting me to comment here.

Sure, pretension is everywhere and unavoidable, and I’ll concede also that it’s often in the eye of the beholder—at least, accusations are.

I probably sound like a bitter traditionalist myself. In some ways I am perhaps, but I actually liked the music and many of the other aspects of the work. But for me, four and a half hours is just too long to wait for a handful of references. I felt like I came away with less than an hour of insight and experience and three and a half hours of wanting more. The gigantic scope is exactly what made the social commentary feel shallow to me. At that scale, I wanted them to either say something substantially more or just say something less.

That’s really what surprised me the most. I’m a bit of traditionalist, and before tonight I never really would have refered to anything that I have heard by Glass as “pretty.” Interesting, and repetitive were words that better described it, and while those two were definitely in play last night there were some chorus driven sections that were very chordal. IV-V-I in every inversion possibile while there as a bunch of other visual things going on was really unexpected. It almost sounded like a traditional opera in those moments (other than the sequence lasted 35 min+)

If the fire marshall had showed up they would’ve shut the place down. There was no good reason to keep a sold out audience in the lobby for half an hour. Bad weather is no excuse to treat people like cattle. I expect that from rock show promoters, not the University Musical Society.

Einstein on the Beach is definitely an experience to which you need to bring your own meaning. For me, I found some meaning in the contrasts. There was contrast between the somberness and humor of the trial scene; a trial is a serious matter, but then we see the stenographers filing their nails, and later, everyone looking into their lunch bags. I also was delighted with the contrast in the second dance, where the bearded man wore all black and seemed to complement the group of dancers in lighter clothing. I also felt that these individual dance scenes brought contrast to the sharp choreography in other scenes. These are just a few examples, but overall, I really enjoyed the fresh artistry of the opera!

I just got home from the performance and was struck particularly by how modern and au courant it was. I somehow expected it to be as incredible an experience as it was, but also for it to be somehow somewhat dated. It was not, not at all. It was an extraordinary experience, the young actors “owned” it and were fabulous. I feel fortunate to be a member of this community (Ann Arbor and UMS communities) and to have shared in this first of what promises to be a riveting and stimulating winter series. All I can say is “good show to all of you at University Musical Society” you hit it out of the park this year; the bar is very high going into our anniversary year but I know you are up to the task, it just excites me to think about it!! Thank you so much.

I did not feel that I wasted my evening.

Einstein on the Beach contains amazing bits of art, moving sounds and images, numbers, Minkowski diagrams, interesting-sounding bits of text, and a gigantic light bar that rotates ninety degrees and then disappears upwards. It’s a technical marvel all around, and the musicians, singers, dancers, and stage crew are all to be commended for amazing work.

That said, taken as a whole I find Einstein on the Beach to be a steaming pile of pretentious, vapid monkey crap.

Why? As auteuricon said earlier, this work is best appreciated as a “transcendent epiphany”—that is to say, a drug trip. Something devoid of complex thought or feeling. Something far removed from the references and so-called themes that have been slapped onto it: Einstein was brilliant and affected humanity in unexpected ways and it’s horrible that his work led to the weaponization of atomic energy. (This is the same problem with the Qatsi trilogy, except there the massive waste of human talent is less evident.)

Not that I’m necessarily against references to Einstein in a massive drug trip spectacle. Nor that Glassian drug trips can’t be great works of art. I just hate the artifice that we’re supposed to be learning anything besides the fact that altered neural states can be quite wonderful to experience.

For those of you looking for more than that, don’t look here.

To be honest, I didn’t think I would enjoy the performance because I knew that it didn’t have a plot like a normal opera. Surprisingly, I had a good time. I kind of liked the fact that I didn’t have to pay close attention to what was going on in order to follow the whole work. Each scene could function independent from the rest of the performances and enjoyed on its own.

For some reason I thought that the black pants and white shirts the actors wore, and the the monochromatic sets, were refreshing. It was not too visually stimulating, yet captivating even in the most repetitive, mundane movements.

I don’t know if I would go see another work like this, but this was definitely a once in a lifetime experience 🙂

Going into “Einstein,” I really had no idea what to expect. I had heard a little bit about it and done a “reenactment” in MUSICOL 406. I have to say that i was completely blown away. It was way different than anything I have ever seen, and it is really hard to describe. I was incredibly impressed by the precision of everything. The exact filters on the lights and the exact movements that were made together or intentionally slightly off. The music was very cool in the way that it would build and release tension both rhythmically and harmonically and drove the opera even though there wasn’t a linear plot line. The circular structure of everything left me very satisfied.

Hi Mark! We had our first day of rehearsal yesterday- 12 hours of sound checks, costuming, and familiarizing ourselves with the Power Center. All is going very well, and we are ready for more today! Probably the best example of a gesture from the opera is the way we walk whenever we move on stage. It’s called the “Einstein Walk” and is based closely on a historical photograph of Albert Einstein in his study. Our arms are curved out from our bodies slightly with space underneath them, our hands are in loose fists right by our sides, and we walk, heads raised, but eyes lowered, very slowly, carefully, and with total awareness of how we transfer our weight from the heels to the balls of our feet until we reach our destination. Audiences will see this walk in many scenes of the opera, and will hopefully recognize a bit of Einstein in it!

Thanks, Mark! The cast arrived today, and I am so excited to welcome them here to Ann Arbor for the start of our rehearsals tomorrow! To answer your question, there are some similarities, as every operatic role requires a great deal of physical and mental energy, which must be practiced and developed over time, but in many ways, my preparation for Einstein has been completely unique from other operatic experiences. We don’t have specific characters or plot lines from which to draw, but the styles of music and movement we embody in this piece are so distinctive and powerful, I think they provide the foundation for both our understanding and our interpretation. Robert Wilsons’ direction focuses our attention on small details, making each significant, and thus requiring us to imbue every gesture, no matter how large or small, with great intention and purpose. This level of focus is unlike anything I have ever experienced. Also, Glass’ music demands total rhythmic precision, pitch control, and sometimes super-human stamina from us as a chorus, so we are learning to stretch our abilities in these areas! As for what this opera “means,” I think the beauty of it is that it will mean different things to different people. This piece, in all its many details, is a symbolic representation of Albert Einstein, so I think every member of the audience will bring his/her own knowledge base to the performance, be immersed in the wonderfully distinct images, sounds, and ideas presented, and then draw individual conclusions about the man, his life, and his contributions. In this way, the audience actually interacts with the opera, which is one of the reasons it is such an exciting and dynamic performance experience!