Saturday, February 17, 2007

Kontroll



I was looking at French movies at the Carnegie Library the
other day, and picked up one that looked kind of interesting
in a nearby section. It turned out to be a Hungarian movie
called Kontroll. The cover is a pretty bad picture of a guy
running in front of a train, but it won a bunch of awards,
and the blurb on the back was by A.O. Scott, who called
it a "A tour de force. A gritty and stylish debut." So I
got it. It's directed by a young (33) director named Nimrod
Antal. He's got a movie in postproduction called Vacancy
with Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson.
The movie is wonderful. Funny, charming, peculiar,
and clever. It's about the guys who check to make sure
people have purchased tickets in the Budapest subway, and
the underground subculture.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Brahms I


I went to hear the Pittsburgh Symphony last night. It was
the first time I've heard them do anything big. Mozart 25,
Death and Transfiguration, and Brahms' first concerto with
Emmanuel Ax.

First of all, I went at the last minute, and
was late (as usual). I walked up to the box office at 7:56
and asked for a student ticket, thinking I had about %10
chance there'd be any seats left. For $14 I was given perhaps the
best seat in the entire house for a piano concerto, E9,
right behind and to the right of the pianist. It was
perfect to watch Ax, but more on that later.

The concert began in a stunning way. After the usual
reminder to turn off cel phones, a member of the viola
section started speaking into the microphone. I was
annoyed, as I figured he'd be talking about a pledge drive
or something. On the contrary, one of the violists,
Peter
Guroff
, had died earlier in the week, and this was a homage
to his memory. He was very young, probably mid 50s. He was
diagnosed with lymphoma 15 years ago, yet after that managed to win the
PSO audition and play for 14 years with the orchestra. The
speech was very moving and they left his chair (on the
outside of the orchestra) with some flowers on it, empty for
the concert. I could see the empty chair easily from where
I sat, and it added an ethereal poignancy to the music that
would come for the next 140 minutes.

Since I'm a big snob, and normally drive 3 hours to hear the
Cleveland Orchestra instead of driving 10 minutes to hear
the PSO, I didn't really know what to expect. It didn't
start out very well. The Mozart was mediocre. For much of
the first movement the strings and winds were a tiny bit
off, which for most any other composer would not be a big
deal, but it drove me crazy during the Mozart. I kind of
gave up hope of anything good until Ax came on. But then
they started Strauss' Death and Transfiguration. It was one
of the first pieces I played in youth orchestra, oh, about
15 years ago. I hadn't heard it for probably 10 years.
They played it marvelously. The sound was rich, the brass
powerful without crassness, and the oboist was great. (To
be fair, I should mention he was great in the Mozart as
well.) The empty chair during that piece, written by the 25
year old Strauss as a tone poem on death and transcendence,
was eerie, but added an ineffable weight to the time. I
recall Strauss pithy comment "I'm not a first rate composer,
but I'm a first-rate second-rate composer." It's hard to
think of him as a second rate composer during that piece
(though I don't share that sentiment for most of his other
works.) I was also reminded of Van Gogh's constant
self-denigration, and thus was reminded to take artist's accounts
of their own work with a grain of salt.

The highlight, though, was certainly Emmanuel Ax. He
radiated lift, kindness and mastery from the moment he
stepped onstage. He warmly shook Cardenes' hand, and the
piece began promptly. This has, over the years, become one
of my favorite works. So much of it that is so profoundly
great that, with my second-rate second-rate vocabulary and
eloquence, I couldn't possibly describe it. Amazingly, he
was only 27 or so when he finished it, and even more
amazingly, not only the public and the orchestra of the
first performance (Gewandhaus Leipzig) hated it as well.
It's so hard for me to imagine them preferring the long
forgotten empty firework-concertos of the day for this
work. I found myself continually wondering how many new
pieces I've heard (and scoffed at) that will be the great
pieces of 50/100 years from now.

Ax was energetic, communicative with the conductor (Jahja
Ling), and sensitive. The orchestra clearly liked him, and
responded in kind. They got out of his way, and I could
actually hear him almost the entire time he was playing.
It was an amazing gift to hear him.

There was a middle-aged conservatively dressed man
sitting next to me. He may as well have been at a
rock concert for how excitedly and exuberantly he listened and
applauded. I don't know who enjoyed the concert more.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Watchdog

Here's a website where you can look up a company's environmental and
ethical practices. I was sad to see Apple rated very poorly.

A Christmas Memory

Listen to Truman Capote read his story A Christmas Memory.
Really powerful. Unabridged, unlike the TAL version.