CGF Newsletter 38: Felicitations and Recommendations

A happy trend, a good book, and a good album

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune is a Maestro Will special. I’ll be generous and give a few hints: 1) I just heard this performed live; 2) the text is a dead giveaway and I’m not pulling any kind of a fast one—what you hear is what you get; 3) it’s not the work of a composer of the top rank of fame, but this person’s name has always gotten a mention in the history books, at least since I was an undergrad.

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 classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing. 

Last Week’s Results
CGF Newsletter 37
André Previn, Clarinet Sonata

Listener Jeremy strikes again, and you can’t say that Joey didn’t give a helpful hint (not to mention the rare Googling permission!) The thing is, nobody thinks about composer-conductors as being real composers, so Previn would never come to mind!

I weighed in first with György Kurtag and Rodion Shchedrin, and I think that Shchedrin in particular was an excellent guess, with the small caveat that he is, in point of fact, still living, whereas the hint made it clear that the composer had died.

Listener Laurie went with Sondheim and Bacharach, an interesting pair to be sure. Listener Eric weighed in with Rorem and Rzewski. All these guesses seem plenty valid to me, and I applaud their guessers!

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.

(GOOD) NEWS!

Friend of the pod Zach Woolfe has a heartening article in the Old Grey Lady today titled “Audiences Are Coming Back to Orchestras After Scary Sales Last Fall.” Here’s what he has to say:

Sellouts weren’t everyday occurrences at major orchestras even before the pandemic, and subscription rates were dipping. But, as with so much else, Covid accelerated existing trends. For many ensembles, the 2021-22 season had been a tentative step forward after a pandemic pause, and the assumption was that 2022-23 would return to something approaching the old days.

Instead, September brought a rude surprise.

Even for orchestras of Cleveland’s eminence and civic stature, people simply weren’t showing up. At the silvery 2,000-seat Severance, Gremillet said, “we’d have perhaps 1,100 or 1,200. For us, that’s not very good.”

Before the pandemic, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra had been averaging houses just over 70 percent. But in fall, said Melia Tourangeau, its chief executive, “we were happy, we were jumping up and down, if we got above 1,000” — about 37 percent of the 2,700-seat Heinz Hall. “It was very visible, and very scary.”

But then a turnaround appeared most everywhere, which many leaders ascribed to an easing of lingering health concerns around the pandemic, particularly among older segments of the audience.

“It seemed like a switch flipped right before Thanksgiving,” said Jeff Alexander, of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

You love to see it! And I love to see the word “boffo” set in print in the year 2023.

Book (Gift) Recommendation

Steven Isserlis, Robert Schumann’s Advice to Young Musicians
University of Chicago Press, 2017

I’ve gone on a bit of a book-buying splurge recently (my body’s way of telling me that the season has ended) and my clear favorite among the haul is a charming little book that would make a wonderful gift for any musician, but particularly a young one graduating from high school or conservatory.

You might think that I’d list the author of this slim tome as Robert Schumann, but that wouldn’t be accurate in the least. Schumann himself wrote a set of dicta to be followed by young musicians, but you can fit the whole thing in a pamphlet. Steven Isserlis, the virtuosic cellist whose tweets remain one of the few reasons to stay connected to that platform, has organized and annotated Schumann’s pithy statements for the 21st century, appending his own reflections and honest appraisals of his ability to adhere to the Schumann guidance.

Some of my favorites:

Respect the old highly, but also take a warm interest in the new. Do not be prejudiced against names unknown to you.

If everybody were to play first violin, we could not have an orchestra. Therefore respect each musician in his own place.

Relieve the severity of your musical studies by reading poetry. Take lots of walks!

...and perhaps my most favorite of all because of how pertinent it is to my own life:

Love your instrument, but do not be vain enough to consider it the greatest and only one. Remember that others are as fine as yours. Remember also that singers exist, and that choral music with orchestra is the most sublime music.

Classical Mixtape

Sufjan Stevens, And I Shall Come To You Like a Stormtrooper In Drag Serving Imperial Realness

Consider this recommendation a form of synecdoche: in recommending this single track, I am truly recommending the whole album, Sufjan Stevens’ latest, titled Reflections.

Reflections couldn’t really be more up my alley. I love Sufjan Stevens’ stuff generally, and this is a 30-minute collection of seven tracks for piano duo. The pianists are Conor Hanick (whom Joey tells me is a big piano guy) and Timo Andres (about whom I have written extensively in the pages of the CGF Newsletter.)