91: The Bad, the Ugly, and the Good

A bit of unpleasantness followed by a lovely festival report

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Jeremy. Here’s your hint: this composer was a sickly child, born with a diseased hip that caused them to limp throughout their life. No Googling!

As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at toneprose@substack.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing. 

Last Week’s Results
Tone Prose 90
Boccherini, Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D

Well I (Will) think we’ve all got to hand it to Young Joseph — while he was laying in his sick bed with Covid (he’s all better now) he was able to come up with the correct answer to this rather tricky NTT! To cover his bases, he added Hummel and Salieri, two excellent additions to an “obscure Classicist” bucket, but of course the giveaway was the guitar.

Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!

Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.

Men Behaving Badly

I (Will) hate to make this newsletter into Dick Pic Central, but there’s been a wild amount of news in this regard of late.

First, there was news that Bill Van der Meulen, the principal horn player of the Houston Symphony and professor of horn at Rice University had been inappropriately exposing himself to students. The outspoken violinist Lara St. John made this news known in her own inimitable way:

(Since these screenshots resurfaced, Mr. Van der Meulen has been relieved of all his major posts.)

It might be worth mentioning that Ms. St. John got some blowback for her fat-shaming in this post.

Next, there is the French conductor François-Xavier Roth, who has been accused of sending “inappropriate messages” (apparently also of the dick picual variety.) According to OperaWire, “the news comes after the conductor was accused by seven musicians of sexual harassment and one woman accused him of sexual assault.” Roth has stepped away from concertizing for the time being.

And finally, the Globe and Mail reports that two members of the Calgary Philharmonic, principal clarinettist Slavko Popovic and principal oboist Alex Klein, have been removed from the orchestra for inappropriate comments posted online on stories pertaining to the dismissal of the New York Philharmonic’s alleged sexual miscreants.

BLECH!

Festival Report

I (Joey) recently had the privilege of attending the Gilmore Piano Festival (formerly the Gilmore Keyboard Festival). This festival is a celebration of all things piano, and is the result of generous donations by Irving S. Gilmore, a businessman, philanthropist, and music lover from Kalamazoo, Michigan (where the festival is held). [Anecdotally, we were told that Mr. Gilmore, a particular lover of piano music, would regularly attend concerts of young to mid-career pianists, and if he really liked what they were doing, he would go backstage and hand them a check of $5000 “as encouragement.”]

The Gilmore Organization also presents the quadrennial Gilmore Artist Award, a $300,000 gift to excellent and innovative concert pianists. Unlike similar awards, nominees for the Gilmore Award are not made aware that they are being considered, and are tracked secretly (kind of like the Pulitzer.) Past awardees include Ingrid Fliter, Leif Oves Andsnes, Kirill Gerstein, and Igor Levit, all well-known quantities in the modern piano world.

They also present the biennial Gilmore Young Artist Award for pianists under 23, and mount a biennial festival with three weeks of daily concerts, which includes a festival fellowship (which is how I got to attend). 

The people of Kalamazoo are absolutely in love with this festival, and with good reason — the programming is top notch, spanning jazz, classical, and music of all sorts, as long as it includes piano.

The highlight of my six days there was watching Gabriela Montero, the acclaimed Venezuelan pianist-improviser, perform in two concerts, including a world premiere of her own composition. Additionally, I heard recitals by Olga Kern and Paul Lewis (Schubert sonata cycle), and great jazz performances from trios led by Gerald Clayton and Isaiah J. Thompson. 

It’s rather amazing that there’s such an excellent festival as small a town as Kalamazoo. Most of the concerts are held at Western Michigan University, a state school with a strong music program (again, largely thanks to support from Irving S. Gilmore). The organization is truly focused on creativity and excellence in music, with a strong emphasis on diversity, professional development, and community. Though that last sentence may seem like the work of ChatGPT, it was really the impression I left Kalamazoo with. Every workshop, concert, lesson, and masterclass I attended left me more inspired to be my own pianist and artist — and there’s no better inspiration to be left with!

Tone Praise

Monteiro, Canaima

 This is the piano quintet by Gabriela Montero that I (Joey) saw premiered at the Gilmore in May. Written in protest of the Nicolás Maduro government’s mishandling and deliberate destruction of the Venezuelan Amazon, Canaima celebrates the beauty of Canaima National Park and culture of the indigenous populations living therein, and mourns its ongoing destruction.

Tone Prose is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)