Around Town: Basking In Brahms Unbound At Disney Hall

Last Thursday evening I had the pleasure of being invited to see the LA Philharmonic at the amazing Disney Hall  for a performance of A German Requiem by Brahms.

It was 70 minutes of sublime music performed by the LA Philharmonic, the 100 voices of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Soprano Christine Schafer and Baritone Matthias Goerne.

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel was in fine form.  He is such a rock star.
Here is the 4th Movement of the Requiem


Brahms with Caspar David Freidrich...beautiful, isn't it?

The LA Phil will be continuing their Brahms Unbound program through May 20th so if you have a chance to go, don't miss it. 

Music and Film - Immortal Beloved

I was reading the post today at Maxminimus today about a football playing thug who earns $1.4 million a month. It reminded me of all the music industry thugs, if you will, who glorify a life of violence and drugs and who make bazillions of dollars doing it.  I don't believe that in 200 years this music will be still be appreciated..but I could be wrong.  In the meantime all these musicians are laughing their way to the bank.

What I've been listening to recently is music by a man who you could say also glorified violence, at least he did in one instance, by dedicating his Symphony #3 to Napoleon. 
But Beethoven later redeemed himself by renaming the Symphony Eroica after Napoleon declared himself Emperor in 1804.

I'm guessing that in 200 years, the music of Beethoven will still be appreciated.





Symphony No. 7 in A Major Op. 92 Allegretto

Around Town - Sunday Afternoon Musicale

Really, this has been a weekend of music and WOW houses for me. 
Sunday afternoon I attended a small private afternoon musicale with a piano recital by Steve Hall. 
This lovely event was held at magnificent California Mediterranean home.
It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon and the hostess was so gracious to open up her exceptionally beautiful and tastefully decorated home.
Since she shared it with us, I thought that I would share it with you.
Here it is.

The recital was held in the living room, which was great because it was appropriately sized for a small group and it had rather exceptional accoutiscs.

I sat in this hallway between the living room and the library where I could admire the Second Empire furniture and the Impressionist paintings.

After the recital was finished we wandered around a bit to see more of the house.
Here is the library.

Then we went downstairs for the reception with champagne and hors d'oeuvres in the more casual entertaining areas, decorated with less formal furniture and modern art.

With our coup de champagne in hand we admired the pool and the gardens.  Everything was so green and the roses were still in full bloom.

Like all major homes it had all the accoutrement's, like his and hers gyms. 
A spa complete with hair salon set up, jacuzzi, mani-pedi set up, etc.

 And indoor lap pool, yes, with double tv's.

 A screening room, naturally...this is LA after all.

And of course a full underground garage, which I didn't see, but I did wonder where all the cars were parked.

Now, if this house appeals to you, you are in luck.

It is on the market for $50 million.

Happy Monday!

Music Appreciation - From Chopin to Hendrix

I adore the music articles in the WSJ Life & Culture section
Last week I was all about Chopin's Preludes
Chopin's Small Miracles - Despite their brevity the Preludes loom large musically
You might like the very fast
Prelude Op. 3 by Chopin master, Ivo Pogorelich
or the forceful 
Prelude Op. 15 by Maurizio Pollini
or the long and longing
Prelude Op. 45 by Ivo Pogorelich 
Yes, Pollini probably plays the Preludes better but he just isn't as romatical as Pogorelich, is he.

This week I'm on to other music entirely
String Quartet Does Hendrix - Turtle Island's new album is  a tribute to his genius

Here is more about the group going Hendrix


I'm pleased to see classically trained musicians having an appreciation of Hendrix

Summer Reading - Music, History and Joy

On my summer reading list...if I can ever find the time to just relax and read.

From the review in the WSJ by Norman Lebrecht

Destiny in D Minor - The origins and influence of Beethoven's last symphony

Of all Beethoven's works, the Ninth Symphony is the least explicable. What on Earth was he doing decorating its finale with a chorus and soloists singing an ode of Schiller's, ostensibly about joy but in reality about brotherhood and liberation? What is the Ninth about? Is it a charter for social reform or for individual rights? A religious ecstasy? Does the symphony mean to us what it meant to Beethoven? Does it mean anything useful at all?

These are some of the questions that set Harvey Sachs off on a painstaking search to discover the roots of Beethoven's last symphony in the time of its creation. The year was 1824, and the Congress of Vienna had turned Europe back to a network of despotic monarchies, as if the Enlightenment and French Revolution had never happened.

Perhaps the Ninth was all some sort of musical Masonic code.

I shall have to read the book and find out. 

Around Town - The Stigmatized at the LA Opera

Overall opera is a difficult art to appreciate. While some opera's are easily watched and enjoyed, such as Butterfly and Turandot, more often than not they are challenging, complicated, hours long and require simultaneous reading while watching the events on stage if you aren't familiar with the story or fluent in multiple languages. James Conlon's production of Franz Schreker's 'The Stigmatized' was one of these difficult operas but definitely worth seeing.

The story is set in fin-de-siecle Genoa with a plot that is marked by the Freudian undertones of the outside appearances and the internal decadence of the characters. There is ugliness and beauty and lust in the story, and of course a completely naked girl in a simulated rape scene on stage....because this is the LA Opera, and there are always naked girls and sex on the LA Opera stage.
The score is rich and romantic and sounds more like a film score than an opera. There are no snappy arias that you can hum to yourself later. While the Viennese Schreker is compared mostly to Strauss, I felt that his music was more akin to that of Korngold whose work was used both in opera and in film. Certainly Korngold must have been influenced by Schreker.

The singing by German soprano Anja Kampe, as the artist Carlotta, was extraordinary. She blew everyone away, including the lead tenor Robert Brubaker, as the crippled aristocrat. The set design was kept purposely simple in order to act as a background for a rich lighting design with elaborate projections. It was very beautiful production visually.

Here's the description from the LA Opera.
World-renowned conductor James Conlon continues the critically lauded, groundbreaking Recovered Voices series with the first-ever production in the Western hemisphere of any opera of Franz Schreker. The New Yorker commented that the work "vacillates between melodies of Mediterranean grace and textures of otherworldly complexity...One scene melts into another with cinematic ease."


Sadly, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center wasn't full and the average age of the audience was about 65. For a new generation raised on film, video games, twitter and instant gratification, I'm afraid that opera will be a lost art.

Around Town - Denali Quartet At Greystone

So many choices, so little time
with the Denali Quartet performing at the beautiful Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills on Sunday at 2:00 or the weekly hike in the hills above Brentwood
With the start of Spring this weekend, I'm opting for the hike
Perhaps I will listen to progressive chamber music on my ipod while I hike...

Around Town - Nature vs Culture and Nature Wins

Another springtime Sunday with so many choices, so little time
Shall it be hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains


Or, the John Adams opera "The Flowering Tree" at Disney Hall

OK, nature wins...I can listen to John Adams music on my ipod while I hike

Shamelessly Stealing From Stella's Roar

I'm totally in love with this music by Zoe Keating

and maybe you will be too

Thanks to design maven and renaissance woman Jill at Stella's Roar

Playing With Polyvore - September Songs

David Bowie version of this September Song
from the opera Mahagonny

Dreaming About The Ring

You probably thought that I this is the ring that I had in mind. Vintage Bezel Set Diamond Ring in 18K from Beladora.com

But no.

I've been dreaming about the long awaited Ring Cycle by the LA Opera.

Seattle, San Francisco, Munich, Vienna and of course Bayreuth have staged all four of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle Operas

Das Rheingold

Die Walküre

Siegfried

and

Götterdämmerung

I'll admit that it can be difficult to sit through the 4 hour performances

But in the end it is worth it just to hear music like this.

Vintage Value Venture - Winter Blues for Mellifluous Mozart

So what if Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman faked the music at the Inauguration...
You can get some real music...
maybe even a little Mozart at the Music Center
Mozart: Sonata in F, K 377
Brahms: Sonata #3
Janacek: Sonata
Schubert: Rondo in D Minor

What to wear?
Classic vintage of course!

Beladora2.com Vintage Retro Sapphire Brooch
Beladora2.com Vintage Sapphire and Diamond Ring

Beladora2.com Vintage Diamond Earrings

List It Cafe Vintage 1950's Wiggle Dress with Jacket in Wool $65

Vintage Skins Blue Crocodile Clutch $265

David Byrne Does Bizet - Au Fond Du Temple Saint

03 - au fond du temple saint - David Byrne

Seeking The Spirit of Christmas

For some reason I've been having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit.

Maybe it is the economy.
Maybe it is government corruption
Maybe it is the fact that I have nowhere to wear this outfit to.

Beladora Diamond and Ruby bow set

Chic tartan skirt

Stuart Weitzman Scarlet Boots

Maybe it is because I don't have tickets to the Master Chorale Messiah Sing-Along at the Disney Hall at the Los Angeles Music Center on December 15th.

Loving A Little Lang Lang

Lang Lang Mozart Piano Concert nr24 c-moll Kv491

Transcending National Culture or Music For The Masses

I've posted before about how the West will soon be bowing down, intellectually at least, to their Chinese masters and Spengler makes the case with musical study for why that will be so.

From the Asia Times
China’s six-to-one advantage over the US
By Spengler


It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out, Americans - a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a Chinese boss.
That is a bit of an exaggeration, of course - some of the bosses will be Indian. Americans really, really don’t have a clue what is coming down the pike. The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in world history.


America outspends China on defense by a margin of more than six to one, the Pentagon estimates. [1] In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano
today, compared to only 6 million in the United States.[2] The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding.


The world’s largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today’s world - surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills - can compete.
There is little doubt that classical music produces better minds, and promotes success in other fields. Academic studies show that music lessons raise the IQs of six-year-olds.
Any activity that requires discipline and deferred gratification benefits children, but classical music does more than sports or crafts.


China's commitment to classical music will have effects that are at once too subtle and too powerful to categorize easily. It is not that classical music helps to train good scientists, for example. Music and the sciences are different disciplines to begin with. Mathematicians who learn music, though, are more likely to cast an ironic eye upon their craft, and look for flaws and opportunity in its cracks and crannies. It is not Mozart's sense of order, but his sense of irony that refines the mind of the mathematician. Mozart goes unerringly toward what is not mathematical in music, but instead is asymmetrical, strange and ambiguous. He can be inspiring, or frightening. Years of instrumental practice, knowledge of repertoire and study of theory are necessary to approach this sort of genius.


Spengler goes on to point out that the Chinese musicians not only are excellent on a technical performance level, they get the joke.
Few musicians nowadays get Mozart's jokes, but one of them is China's most famous musician, Lang Lang. The 26-year-old virtuoso has an undeserved reputation for mugging. "Like a hammy actor," wrote New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini on November 27, Lang Lang "has a penchant for interpretive exaggeration. His playing can be so intensely expressive that he contorts phrases, distorts musical structure and fills his music-making with distracting affectations". Another way to look at the matter is that Lang Lang gets the joke, and Tommasini does not.


And...thank god the Chinese are embracing Western classical music because when they take over the world I really don't want to have to listen to Chinese Opera which sounds like squealing cats in a bag. Just thinking about it makes me cringe.


Something more than the mental mechanics of classical music makes this decisive for China. In classical music, China has embraced the least Chinese, and the most explicitly Western, of all art forms. Even the best Chinese musicians still depend on Western mentors. Lang Lang may be a star, but in some respects he remains an apprentice in the pantheon of Western musicians. The Chinese, in some ways the most arrogant of peoples, can elicit a deadly kind of humility in matters of learning. Their eclecticism befits an empire that is determined to succeed, as opposed to a mere nation that needs to console itself by sticking to its supposed cultural roots. Great empires transcend national culture and naturalize the culture they require.


So....maybe this year for Christmas, instead of buying new skateboards or computer games for the kids in your family, you might want to consider music lessons.