CGF Newsletter 7: Heart of Darkness
Russians murder a Ukrainian conductor; Joey reports on being an internet piano competitor; every night is now lady's night at the symphony (1/4 of the time)
Name That Tune
This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Jeremy. Here’s your hint: Despite what you’re about to hear, this composer was an avid collector and curator of American folk music. 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 classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing.
Last Week’s Results
CGF Newsletter 6
Ferruccio Busoni, Piano Concerto in C
Congratulations to me and Listener Cody for identifying this piece right off the bat. The Busoni piano concerto is notorious for its insanity: it’s over an hour long, wildly virtuosic, and — most importantly — employs a 48-voice off-stage tenor-bass choir. If you know, you know.
[Note: Listener Cody was very naughty at first by publicly commenting with his answer, but then he reread the rules, deleted his comment, and emailed us instead. You love to see it!]
Listener Marcello did some great analysis and landed on Liszt, which is really the only logical choice if you’re trying to suss it out through reasoning. Listener Caspian also had some very good analytical points but didn’t land on a composer.
For those wondering, the language sung by the choir is Danish, and they are singing the final scene from Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger’s verse drama Aladdin for some reason.
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.
Requiem
A truly horrifying bit of news out of Kherson, Ukraine this week, as reported by the Guardian:
Russian soldiers have shot dead a Ukrainian musician in his home after he refused to take part in a concert in occupied Kherson, according to the culture ministry in Kyiv.
Conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko declined to take part in a concert “intended by the occupiers to demonstrate the so-called ‘improvement of peaceful life’ in Kherson”, the ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page.
The concert on 1 October was intended to feature the Gileya chamber orchestra, of which Kerpatenko was the principal conductor, but he “categorically refused to cooperate with the occupants”, the statement said.
Ukrainian musicians were swift in their condemnation of this murder, as were several expatriate Russians, including Semyon Bychkov who said, “The bullets don’t distinguish between people. It didn’t make me feel worse that this man was a conductor, it just confirmed the pure evil that’s been going on even before the first bombs fell on Ukraine.”
[On a tangential note, I was astonished this week to see what contemporary Russian propaganda looks like and just how bald faced it is with regards to LGBT acceptance. My source was this expat Russian YouTuber’s “reaction video”.]
Joey’s Journeys into Online Competition
I recently participated in the Seattle International Piano Competition, and since music competitions seem to spark the interest of many who are not deeply in the classical music world, I thought I’d write a little bit about my experience.
As a high schooler, I was fairly active in regional and national piano competitions, and as happens to many students, I partook less and less when I went to college for music. With the increasing intensity of my musical studies, I didn’t have the time or energy to prepare for competitions, and in my case, my undergraduate teacher was not very interested in competitions as an institution. (He said that having been on many juries, he knew firsthand how corrupt they could be. I can’t speak to that!) But recently, I’ve been having a go at applying to more, and I hit as a finalist in the Seattle International Piano Competition. I was so excited!... and then I read that they would once again hold it online (as opposed to its pre-Covid, in-person version). Bummer, but what can you do? It would have been a great chance to visit Will, too. [Ed.: 😢]
So I prepared to record a video of myself. Their stipulations were that each of us eight finalists had to record a video 1) showing hands, feet, and face at all time, 2) no more than 27 minutes in length from beginning to end, 3) unedited from beginning to end, (to approximate in-person competition,) and 4) with a program to include this (rather middling) keyboard sonata by the Spanish priest and composer Padre Antonio Soler (a Scarlatti student — you’ll hear the comparison immediately). I recorded my program in mid-September, submitted it, and waited for the virtual event streaming each of our performances.
They released it on the afternoon of October 9, and I really enjoyed listening to the videos prepared by my fellow competitors, and I sent it to a few of my friends and family. Although I didn’t place, it was not a negative experience. Of course, I would have loved to compete in person, and I think I have more energy as a live performer than a recording artist (don’t we all). But I had a couple of friends from my Master’s program in the competition as well, including the gold medalist, and their recordings were especially enjoyable to listen to. All the competitors had surprisingly interesting programs, which cannot be said for every piano competition, in which certain flashy and impressive pieces tend to dominate, but I’m proud to say we all seemed to program artistically. I hope you will agree with me if you choose to listen to any of our videos. [Ed.: I listened, and Joey should have won!]
—Joey
I Am Woman, Hear Me More!
NPR reports that programmers are finally allotting a fairer share of their concert space to the work of female composers. From Tom Huizenga:
The latest Orchestra Repertoire Report, a statistical overview published by advocacy group the Institute for Composer Diversity, shows a 638% increase in music by women at our symphony halls in the past six years. The numbers for women composers of color — which started at next to nothing — is up a whopping 1425%.
[Will’s note: I would need math whiz Joey to weigh in on this, but the article starts off by saying that both the Chicago Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra had 2018-2019 seasons with zero women programmed. If they suddenly have 10 or 20, what’s the percentage increase? DNE??]
Classical Mixtape
Björk, Overture to Dancer in the Dark
For those of you classical music lovers who are not hip to Björk (who just released a dope new album), this is probably the perfect entry point, and a piece of music that makes a case that she is a composer to be reckoned with even pitted against the most traditional of criteria. This piece has become a near staple among forward-thinking wind ensembles.
—Will
Thank you, Joey, for sharing your competition video and your experience. Listening to it reminded me that I need to explore more of Martinů's work. I loved that etude. Without listening to any of the other performances, of course you should've won, Mr. Vaz.
Regarding the article on the Orchestra Repertoire Report, I don't know how this would or should impact the statistics, but I'm pretty sure the Chicago Symphony Orchestra did have women programmed for their 2018-2019 season (Missy Mazzoli was the composer-in-residence)...but most of that season was lost to a musicians' strike. Not that there would've been enough compositions by women programmed if the season had gone ahead as planned anyway...
Surprised and pleased to see a Björk rec. Fossora has been in constant rotation since it dropped, and Selmasongs is always close by.
I'm wondering if anyone at Classical Gabfest has seen Tár yet? I'd love to read (or hear on a podcast...) what the thoughts of those in the industry are. As an outsider, I loved it for the performances. I wonder how accurate its portrayal of anything else that happens in the film is.