NSO plays Matthews, Mackey, Sibelius

Saw the NSO with violinist Leila Josefowicz and the Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu last night, in the DC-premiere of a captivating violin concerto by the composer Steve Mackey composed, Sibelius' 5th, and orchestrations of selected Debussy Preludes by Colin Matthews.

The Mackey piece, "Beautiful Passing," was composed with Josefowicz in mind in 2008. Josefowicz played some of the key themes before the performance and explained their provenance in Mackey's experience of his mother's death. I can appreciate this as a way to get an audience to identify with a new work--its hard to expect even the most open-minded concert-goers to develop much rapport with a complex piece the first time out. Premieres end up being "that new thing" between the overture and symphony. Some framing and a story, live from the musicians or composer, helps ensure listeners walk away with a lasting association, even if they can't hum the tune.

Yet, as Robert Reilly notes here, a work like this should really stand on its own as a piece of abstract music and learning about the "program" in this way can be a bit distracting. For instance, the work opens with a violent contest between wild percussive gnashing in the orchestra and the exuberant, almost desperate violin solo--it ends softly, the violin exhausted, the orchestra at a quiet drone. We are told this is Mackey's mother resigning herself to die, but such information seems so terribly reductive when applied to this rich, evocative music. Words and stories fail, as they should, to describe the experience. While inspired by a specific experience for the composer, the music becomes more universal, in the hearing, transcending its subject matter. Which is all to say, my hope for this worthwhile piece is that it is still played in 10 years but that the majority of audience members without the initiative to check out its history are none the wiser about its context.

Josefowicz was quite stunning in the solo part, embracing the raucous dance figures that reappear throughout with diabolical gusto and imbuing the closing section with a devastating sense of collapse.

After the half was a bravura performance of Sibelius' 5th symphony. Lintu goaded along the rollicking rhythms of the first movement with swift, intense precision, culminating in an ecstatic climax that was hard not to applaud. The winning final movement (I swear to God that theme is ripped off in a tearful Don Bluth-animated animal reunion somewhere) was urgent but suitably majestic. Lintu clearly has that great intangible conducting skill of maintaining momentum while allowing the audience to appreciate the "vertical" harmony and texture in a work. The NSO sounded agile and rich throughout, though some shrillness in the winds and scattered coordination problems in the strings were popped up.

The concert opened with a series of five Debussy preludes, as orchestrated by the composer Colin Matthews, apparently best known for his role in Deryk Cooke's performance version of Mahler's 10th. This may be a personal bias, but I have difficulty seeing the point of these sorts of projects. The Preludes are quintessential creatures of the piano, and, not having particularly memorable tunes, much of their appeal is bound up in the way Debussy's colors play on that instrument. Why one would want to hear an orchestra try its hand is unclear. Moreover, it is exceedingly grating to hear Debussy's music orchestrated in a way that is far removed from how Debussy's orchestral music actually sounds. Not that I would find it particularly worthwhile to hear someone fake Debussy's style, but there is some deep cognitive dissonance in listening to the composer's music via a sensibility far more obvious and schmaltzy than anything we would expect from Debussy himself. Not saying all orchestrations are bad ideas, but it doesn't work for all material.

(And dere's Downey's original take at Ionarts.)

Santorum on Citizenship

Santorum, at a NH townhall Saturday:

The job of a citizen is one that was essential--our founders believed was essential. They limited, as you know, initially, the rights of citizenship from the standpoint of voting to a small group of people because they were concerned that all Americans wouldn't take the responsibility seriously, wouldn't be educated enough to make an informed decision. Over time, though laws passed and amendments passe to the constitution, that opened up and more and more people. But with that freedom to be a participant in the electoral process comes responsibility.

That's right. The exclusion from the franchise of women, minorities, and poor dudes didn't have anything to do with a preponderance of influential 1700s politicians people believing they were classes of human being that didn't belong in public life, or in some cases, subhuman. Those infalliable Founders just didn't think they were "ready" yet, but boy would they have been pleased to learn that with a century or two of hard work they'd show they were worthy of getting a vote.

Why has a fetishization of the "founders" so characterized the current right-wing resurgence? What necessitates such an extreme whitewashing of history when surely there would be no face lost in claiming that these extraordinary men were nonetheless products of their time in some respects, or even, that their impeccable morality exists outside of space-time but they lived in a democracy after all and their co-generationalists forced these positions on them?

But of course, neither of these questions would get at the real objective here: rationalizing conservatives' deep discomfort with the principles of egalitarianism that liberals, and the modern society they have shaped, hold dear. That discomfort, a result of deep aesthetic and sentimental attachments to authority (be it the ancien regime or Christian white male privilege), can be suffocating to the emotionally and intellectually incurious who make up much of the conservative base. Santorum's bed-time stories at once absolve these folks of a responsibility they can't bring themselves to bear while reinforcing a truth they really do cherish deep down: that people "like them"--really know what's best for the country.