More Labor Issues

I can't get away from this.  NPR this morning covered 2 labor related issues.  The first one was the recent contract negotiations with rail workers - the guys who build and maintain the tracks - to provide them with paid sick leave!  They've gotten 4 paid leave days per year, plus 3 "personal days," with most of the major rail lines.  They're still negotiating with BNSF.

The second was about a new federal law providing pregnant works with "reasonable accommodations" at work, with tales of women who were fired because they asked for things like a bottle of water at their work station, and a temporary shift to a position with less heavy lifting.

All I could think as I listened to this was the lyrics from Bodies on the Line (see this post http://hederascorner.blogspot.com/2023/06/labor-issues-are-still-with-us.html) where the management was responding to worker requests for sick time by saying, "Die, and prove it."

Die, and prove it.  And I thought we'd moved on.

Labor Issues are Still With Us

 On May 19, as a member of the Oakland Symphony Chorus, I participated in the spectacular (if I may brag!) world premiere of Bodies on the Line, an oratorio commissioned by the Symphony's late director Michael Morgan, about the 1937 auto workers sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan.  I've been rehearsing that for almost 6 months.  It's full of facts about what happened in the old GM auto plants, and what the strikers wanted, and every time I turn around these days, I hear echoes of those lyrics.  

For example, the first of the strikers' eight demands was the end of piecework pay, to be replaced by a daily salary.  A few weeks before performance, there was an article on NPR about the law, passed by California in 2022, banning piecework pay in the garment industry in California!  In 2022 they were still paying garment workers piecework!  And of course we regularly hear that Starbucks workers are trying to form a union, and the workers at Trader Joe's in Rockridge (a little over half a mile from my house in north Oakland) are trying to organize a union.  And on and on.

Today I heard another story on NPR that brought the oratorio lyrics back to me with a bang.  It was a story about a ceremony in (I think) Stratton, Ohio, where the W. H. Sammis coal plant will shut down in mid-July.  It sounded kind of like a memorial, if not a funeral, for the plant, which has operated in the area since 1959.  The plant had employed the people of Stratton (population under 300) for most of their lives.  And listening to this story, another lyric came back to me.  Late in the oratorio, during the strike, the chorus sings about it, and everyone but the altos was in favor of the strike (I sing alto).  The altos sang, "What would we do without GM?  It's GM who feeds us, who feeds the people of Flint."  And you know, I listened to the story of the memorial to a dying coal plant in Stratton, Ohio, and those words ran through my mind; and I cried.  I'm crying now.  These are stories about human beings, and sometimes we're not as much in control as we think.

RIP, Pete Seeger

I don't often cry when I listen to the news.  But I cried this morning when I heard that Pete Seeger had died.  He was 94, and people do die when they're that old.  I thought about his lifelong struggle to put people and music over war and conflict - his attempt to prove that the guitar is mightier than the sword - and I cried to think that he is gone.  I learned his songs fifty years ago, in college; I'm still singing them.

It is mightier, Pete.  As long as we continue to sing your songs, you will be immortal.

But I'm still crying.  Vaya con Dios, Pete.

Flaming bagpipes

Over the last couple of months I've seen two short videos posted on Facebook, in which bagpipe players, playing their instruments, caused bursts of flame to come out of the drones.  Drones are the pipes which stick out of the bags and produce a single tone each.  The two videos I saw were:

Unicycling Darth Vader Upgrades to Flaming Bagpipes
The Badpiper Thunderstruck

You can find more videos, if you're interested, by searching for "flaming bagpipes" on YouTube.

Now, I like bagpipes, a taste I inherited from my mother; not everyone does.  But to the best of my knowledge, the chanter (the one the piper fingers) and the drones are made of wood, although Wikipedia doesn't confirm this directly.  And I definitely learned from Wikipedia that bagpipe drones are either reed instruments (like a clarinet) or double-reed instruments (like an oboe).  This explains a lot about the way bagpipes sound, actually.

This leaves a huge question in my mind:  how the devil do you blow a huge blast of flame through a wooden reed or double reed instrument without incinerating the whole boiling, and the bagpiper too?  And yet both of these bagpipers continued to play while intermittently shooting bursts of flame out of the drones.

I spent part of last weekend at the East Bay Mini Maker Faire in Oakland, California. Mini Maker Faires usually have flame-throwers somewhere; this one had a guy (from Sheet Metal Alchemist) with a tower of flamethrowers; you could set them off by swinging a mallet at a lever, just like the old "ring the bell" carny act, except this one produces a huge burst of flame in the air above you.  I asked the guy about the bagpipes, but he said no, he didn't know anything about flaming bagpipes.  He sounded interested, though. 

Now, one group which is always at the Mini Maker Faire is The Crucible, an Oakland non-profit specializing in art production involving fire.  I dropped in at their booth and posed my question, and learned some very interesting things from a man there.  I regret that I didn't think to ask his name; he was an older man with a white beard, wearing a hat, sitting next to the booth.

We both agreed that anyone doing this has to put some kind of gas source (The Crucible uses propane) inside the bag.  It would have to have a jet poking up inside the drone, and some kind of spark arrangement on the jet to light it; finally it would have to have either one or two switches the player could use to control the gas flow and the spark (separately or together).  My consultant pointed out that the flow of gas up the tube, before ignition, would cool the area somewhat.  Also, if the flame only lasts for a second or two (and I didn't see any that lasted much longer than that), it probably won't affect the wood of the drone at all; and, of course, the flame will go away the instant the gas flow stops. 

Now, what about the reed or double reed?  Reeds are usually at the end of the instrument where the air is blown in; in a bagpipe drone, that's inside the bag.  If you tapped the gas source into the drone above the reed, it wouldn't be affected by the flame at all.  The gas doesn't have to pass through the reed, although the air from the bag does.

Without talking to someone who's actually created one of these things, this is all pure speculation.  But at least I'm no longer wondering why the whole megillah doesn't burst into flame.

Polychoral Splendors

Have you ever heard a 40 voice choral piece?  No, not 40 singers singing 4 or 8 parts; 40 singers, each performing a separate individual part.  That's what we heard last night.

When my husband bought us tickets for Cal Performances' Polychoral Splendors of the Florentine Renaissance, I mostly noticed that it featured His Majestys Sagbutts and Coronets (that's pronounced "SACKbutts", by the way).  I didn't realize until I heard the pre-concert lecture that we were attending the 21st century premieres of three choral works that haven't been performed since the sixteenth century.  None of these works has less than 40 voices, and one of them has 60.

That's right.  Sixty separate vocal lines, each sung by one singer.  From the program notes:  "... to experience the important spatial dimension of many choirs that are physically separated, a 16th-century version of 'surround sound' that is almost impossible to reproduce effectively on recordings."  (Although they did record the concert; and if it's ever on sale, I'll buy it.)  In Berkeley's First Congregational Church, we had the acoustics we needed.

The story behind this concert is absolutely fascinating, but it's also quite long, so I'll refer you to the concert program notes, which you can find online at Cal Performances.  (Warning:  it's 3.5MB.)  In very brief, it's based on conductor Davitt Moroney's scholarly research into "gigantismo" - the suggestion that in the mid-16th century, there was more than the one known instance of choral works written for 40 or more voices.  His research uncovered three of them, two from the court of Cosimo de Medici, in Florence, the third from Spain.  This was all part of the amazing flowering of art that produced the great visual treasures of Florence - who but Cosimo de Medici could have afforded a sixty-voice choir?  In fact, the pre-concert lecture noted that when Alessandro Striggio's mass, Missa sopra "Ecco sì beato giorno", was composed, there were only 5 places in Europe where it could be performed:  Florence, Vienna, Hamburg, Rome, and Madrid.  My composer can write more choral parts than your composer.

Listening to this music is like looking at a renaissance tapestry.  It's incredibly detailed and dense.  It isn't polyphony, there's no fugue.  The separate parts blend together into a sonorous wall, with brief illuminations as a soprano or a tenor soars above the sound and then blends back in.  I've never felt so much that I was in the presence of another age.  The sound was overwhelming.

I particularly liked the 40-voice canon on the Ten Commandments - ten 4 voice choruses, each singing the same canon 10 times.  When the 10th chorus comes in, all the choruses are singing all the words of all ten commandments at once (in Latin hexameter verse).  You'd think it would be total chaos.  In fact it's a brooding, introspective piece that is amazingly soothing.  You can't understand the words but you're supposed to know what they are.

Oh, the Sagbutts.  That's a proto-trombone, in case you didn't know.  They had a whole family of them, I particularly enjoyed the Gabrieli Canzon primi toni which they performed.  The really significant one was the grand bass sackbutt - I never could quite see the whole thing but it was so huge I wondered how long it was.  Wikipedia says that the double-bass or "Octav-Posaun" sackbut was pitched in A in Michael Praetorius' day, but the modern version is in B flat.  My husband, a former tubist, says that means the fully extended tube is 32 feet long, and the extended slide is probably 10 feet.  It had a "pusher" attached, because the slide is too long for a man's arm to extend fully.   Still according to Wikipedia, the only modern copy of the only surviving 17th century double-bass sackbut "is currently owned and played by Wim Becu," and that was the name of the performer last night.

Astounding music, all around.  Do read the program notes.

Baroque Opera

We had an unusual treat last Friday.  We attended a performance of Handel's Xerxes, one of the forty-some operas he composed and put on for the delight of 18th century London.  Handel's operas are unusual now because, well, the male leads tend to be sopranos.  Georg Friedrich was nothing if not fashionable, and the height of opera fashion in his day was the castrato. It's very hard to find castrati these days, so Handel operas have a lot of women singing male roles, although you do get the occasional counter tenor.

The singing - all the music - was wonderful; never having attended a live opera at the opera house, I was fascinated to discover that they do not amplify the singers.  No lapel mikes here.  This means you actually have to listen to them; and because the War Memorial Opera House has fabulous acoustics, you can hear them, at least where I was in the orchestra section.  But you will not be deafened by an amplified orchestra, as we were when we saw Wicked.  If you're interested in the details, including the names of the cast and more about the plot than you could ever need to know, it's all on the S.F. Opera's web page for Xerxes.  In fact, you might still be able to get seats - as I write this there are 2 performances left.

Most of Handel's operas were tragedies, opera seria, but Xerxes is a comedy.  (This may be why the premiere bombed in April 1738; the audience was Not Amused.)  Xerxes the king (sung by a soprano, originally by a castrato) and his brother Arsamenes (sung by a counter tenor, but originally sung by a woman soprano!) are both in love with Romilda, the daughter of a general.  Romilda (sung by a woman, phew!) is in love with Arsamenes.  Romilda's sister Atalanta (another soprano) is also in love with Arsamenes and is willing to lie, cheat and steal to get him, and she does.  There are a lot of sopranos in this cast.  In fact, the only  non-sopranos are Elviro, Arsamenes' servant (a bass), Ariodates, Romilda's father (a bass), and Amastris, Xerxes' official fiancee (a contralto).  Amastris has come, disguised as a soldier in Xerxes' army, because she can't bear to be separated from him, only to discover that he plans to jilt her for Romilda. Amastris as sung last Friday is the most masculine presence on the stage, and sings several fabulous arias, swearing revenge.

If this sounds like something you might have seen on Days of Our Lives, only with royal courts and good singing, you're right.  It's actually worse - I don't think anyone in Days of Our Lives ever declared their love for a tree, but when the opera opens that's what Xerxes is doing.  And he's doing it in an aria that I've known for years without ever realizing what it really was:  it's called Ombra mai fu, but if you know Handel's music at all, you know it as Handel's Largo.  I'll never hear the Largo quite the same way again.  In the next scene, Romilda entertains the court with a charming aria explaining how silly it is that Xerxes is in love with a tree, Xerxes hears her and is smitten, and off we go. It's bad luck to make fun of the king.

In the third act, Arsamenes, who thinks Romilda has betrayed him, and Romilda, who thinks he has betrayed her, have a major lover's spat which, of course, is a soprano duet.  Sorry, in a soprano argument, the female has the bigger voice - the counter tenor is all in his head voice.

I had a wonderful time.  I've always loved Handel's music, and here was a whole evening of it, brilliantly performed, with gorgeous costumes and hilarious staging.  The chorus was gray - they wore grayface makeup, gray clothing, gray caps.  They moved around in a stately way, being the crowd, and singing a couple of short pieces.  A small group of stagehands was made up as servants, in whiteface, bald, wearing black clothing with white collars, stockings, and shoes, and walking in perfect step to rearrange lawn chairs and other furniture, move giant Assyrian statues in and out, and so forth.  Nobody but the soloists ever displayed any expression of any sort, they were like statues.  I'm sorry, but Arsamenes' costumes too often looked like pajamas, maybe it's the way he wore them.  The one with the gorgeous 18th century male costumes is Amastris - I'd love to have that hat!  And that voice, and that lung power!

More on the Bach Festival

I decided I wanted to write up all of my trip to the Carmel Bach Festival.  I discovered before we left for Vancouver that the Festival began the weekend Jim set off on his first backpacking trip, so I sprang for some concert tickets and 3 nights of motel (all the time I could spare, I had to be at a meeting Thursday evening), and off I went, to spend the next three days eating, sleeping, and attending concerts and lectures.  It was great.  I dumped my stuff at the motel and walked down to my first concert, an amazing semi-staged production of the St. John Passion, which I wrote up in my last post:

http://hederascorner.blogspot.com/2011/07/johannes-passion.html

The staging in street clothes (see blog) really startled me at first, I thought, can this be the dress rehearsal?  But it really worked.  That evening I went to a smaller concert on double quartets.  The Festival’s new concertmaster explained, before performing the Mendelssohn Octet, that they would do (on period instruments) the original 1825 version which Mendelssohn composed at age 16, which he (the concertmaster) had been asked by the Library of Congress to collate.  It was wonderful. 

I started the next day by almost not getting to the church on time – I miscalculated the available parking at the Carmel Mission, and just made it to the 11 AM organ concert.  I hoped to get to a vocal master class at noon but had to give it up, the Mission was too far away.  Monday night’s concert (not in street clothes) was CPE Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, Purcell, and a surprisingly good Concerto Grosso by one Richard Mudge.  I also attended the pre-concert talk, at which I learned that C.P.E. Bach ran a musical salon in late 18th century London.  I didn't know that.  All the pre-concert talks were streamed live and are available on the Festival web site.

Tuesday I attended the obligatory lecture on Bach and numerology; only part of this will be streamed live because the lecturer went way over his allotted 30 minutes!  But it was great.  That afternoon I attended a “solo spotlight” centered around the Cantata BWV 55 for solo tenor, plus some flute and harpsichord works, all Johann Sebastian.

Which brings me to the Festival politics.  You may have noticed that quite a bit of what I listened to at the Bach festival wasn’t Bach at all.  This is the first year for the new Festival music director, Paul Goodwin – Bruno Weil just retired after directing it for years.  Goodwin is a long lanky Brit with a major sense of humor, and he’s shaken up some of the stalwarts.  I had two conversations with (much) older attendees who were offended/distracted by the street clothes staging of the St. John Passion, and listened to a (much) older man who complained that they had “taken all the Bach out of the festival,” just before attending a concert of Vivaldi bassoon and cello concerti which he had presumably paid for.  I thought the whole thing was fabulous, but then I like all that period’s music, not just Bach.  

When not in street clothes, Goodwin conducts in a knee-length frock coat (Victorian, not eighteenth century; it had no defined waist).  I haven’t seen one of those for years.

Tuesday evening’s concert, The English Spirit, had not only no Bach, it only had one Baroque piece – the masque from Purcell’s Dioclezian.  It was all English composers – which means the next one after the Purcell was by William Walton (Façade Suite No. 1), a very odd piece set to some incomprehensible poetry by Dame Edith Sitwell.   Yes, they had a narrator read it.  It made NO sense.  This was followed by a choral piece by Sir John Taverner (who is a friend of the music director’s!), and ending with Vaughn Williams’ Serenade to Music.   

The Purcell masque was absolutely hilarious, I practically fell out of my chair laughing; the couples on either side of me never, as far as I could see, cracked a smile.  They were grim.  The Taverner piece, from a choral singer's point of view, was terrifying - four long, slow, soft a capella sections, in very close harmony, after which the orchestra came in under them.  It is appallingly easy to be flat in that situation and they were not flat; I congratulate them.

The Vivaldi bassoon concert I mentioned was my last concert – performed on a period bassoon, and a period cello with five strings (high E).  The web site called it Double Reed Virtuosity, but the printed program said Low Down Vivaldi!  I would have liked to stay and see the film about the Eroica, and the full scale concert in the Mission basilica, but I had to get home.

Johannes-passion

Here I am in Carmel, attending the first day of the Carmel Bach Festival.  The rest of the festival has an amazing standard to live up to.  My first concert was the St. John Passion by J. S. Bach.  They semi-staged it:  everyone in street clothes incuding the instrumentalists, soloists walking on and off stage at random, Jesus wearing a brown t-shirt and running shoes.  The choir was fabulous - strong, tight, together, even on those impossible sixteenth-note runs.  (The small orchestra was also excellent, but as a singer I always pay attention to the chorus.)  It took me awhile to realize there was a second choir (the youth chorus) behind me and overhead, in the choir loft!  The Sunset Center has wonderful acoustics.

The soloists were outstanding - all of them sang from memory, even Rufus Muller as the Evangelist, who sings practically the entire time (fabulous tenor voice and impeccable German diction).  The conductor wore jeans and a work shirt and conducted with his entire body, not using a baton.  The entire performance was electric - passionate and taut.  By the time the Crucifixion came along the audience was right there in it.

Rather than invent more adjectives I'll just say it was one of the few concerts I've attended where the standing ovation was unanimous, began within 15 seconds of the end of the concert, and lasted for 3 curtain calls.  They'll have trouble living up to that standard.

The Things You Remember

Having Sirius XM Radio in my car leads to some interesting coincidences.  Listening to the classical Pops channel (I think it's 80), is kind of like listening to an iPod Shuffle full of classical music:  they play single movements of things, short overtures etc.  The other day, they brought up a lovely, lilting piece, and I thought, I know that music, what is that?  I looked at the dash - the label said, Ovt to Donna Diana, Reznicek.  Never heard of it, I thought, but I know that music.

Then it hit me.  Wait - that's the theme to Sergeant Preston of the Yukon!  I used to watch that show religiously, but I haven't thought about it in (gasp) over 50 years - Wikipedia reminds me it went off the air in 1958!  (I was 12.)  Still according to Wikipedia, the Donna Diana overture is mainly remembered because of the Sergeant Preston show, and its predecessor on radio, Challenge of the Yukon (1947 - 1955).

For the music history buffs, the Wikipedia article on Reznicek has a tidbit that I just love.  Reznicek had a sense of humor, apparently not shared by his friend Richard Strauss.  Reznicek wrote a symphonic poem he called Schlemihl which is apparently a direct parody of Strauss' Ein Heldenleben.  You have to love any composer who can write a piece called Schlemihl!!

A Night Out in Las Vegas

First, let me say that Carlos Santana was great:  wonderful band, awesome rhythm section (all three of them), fine lead singers, and of course the man himself on lead guitar.  Santana is the most relaxed performer I've ever seen on stage, leading to a continual game of "where's Carlos right now?" as you look for the velvet shirt, the cap, and the red electric guitar.  He wanders around and stops to play wherever he is when his next lick is due, occasionally exchanging a high five with another musician.  And the lighting designer is a damn genius.  You couldn't really see Santana clearly from halfway back, but the video monitors did continual close-ups of him (and the others) - his face is mellow and warm, and totally focused on his music. 

Now let's talk about the venue:  the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.  The concert was in "The Joint," their performance venue (recently upgraded, according to the web site).  I agree with their hype about the sound system and the lighting, both were excellent; but the web site raves about "seven VIP luxury suites and a prestigious VIP level." Don't think this implies any sort of luxury for the schmucks down on the floor.  We sat in folding chairs (cheap folding chairs), locked together to make a row.  Worse, the peon who numbered the chairs in our row (in chalk, by hand, on the underside of the seats) couldn't count; our tickets were for seats 4 and 5, and the seats in our row were numbered "3 4 6 7...," so they effectively sold us a non-existent seat. The ushers on the floor finally got everybody settled in, and the seats really were quite good, except for the six-foot dude in front of me who spent almost the entire concert standing up and grooving.  Fortunately the two video monitors gave a continuous if disjointed view of the stage action.

I brought earplugs with me.  I can't imagine why I didn't think to take them to the show.  I think my hearing has largely recovered.

No place that seats 4,000 people can realistically be described as "intimate."

I give points for effort to the casino staff on the ground, but my overall impression of the place was of poor maintenance and tacky patrons.  The bathrooms were dirty; one of the handicapped stalls in one bathroom had been out of order so long they'd removed the door and were using it to store cleaning supplies.  The other "handicapped" stall was barely wide enough for a walker or wheelchair, and had not been cleaned since someone puked in there, despite the fact that the restroom had an attendant.

Now for tacky patrons:  I've never seen so many cheap hookers - obviously cheap hookers - in one place in my life, even on earlier trips to Las Vegas.  (We usually go to shows in the higher class casinos.)  Even on MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland.  Waiting for the valets to retrieve our car was a runway show of the latest in 5 inch stiletto heels, micromini skirts, and push-up bras.  Oh, and thongs.  They had a sign on the door saying "dress code after 6 PM."  Given what we saw before, during and after the show, I shudder to imagine how people dress before 6 PM!

Another plus for the casino staff on the ground:  when the valet captain saw my sister's walker, she jumped our ticket to the front of the line, saving us probably 40 minutes.  But the valet staff was edgy in the extreme, and tonight - 2 days later - we found out why.

They were being busted.  The police raided the casino that night:  narcotics and prostitution, in an area somewhat oddly called "Rehab" ("the ultimate Vegas pool party").  As we tried to drive away (it must have taken us 10-15 minutes to clear the casino driveway), we saw medical techs, and assumed somebody'd had an accident; but we also saw a K-9 unit, which isn't usually dispatched to an accident.  But it sure is dispatched to a drug bust!

Lift That Bale

After writing that last post, I realize I want to talk some more about the various versions of Show Boat. Full disclosure: I've never read the book and never seen either movie all the way through. I've recently attended two public discussions of the Broadway show; and last night I sang in the chorus of a concert version of Jerome Kern's Broadway version of Show Boat.

In the second public discussion, the Oakland East Bay Symphony's forum on Race Relations in Art, the presenters showed several film clips: the introduction to the 1951 movie, Paul Robeson singing Old Man River from the 1936 movie, a 1940-something clip from a Hollywood medley with Lena Horne singing Can't Help Loving That Man, a clip from the 1951 movie with Ava Gardner singing Can't Help Loving That Man.

Let's start with the 1951 movie. This is a Disney plantation (although MGM made the movie), in technicolor of course. The slaves all have clean clothes with no visible rips or patches, they have nice straw hats, and they all smile, all the time. It kinda made me shudder. It might as well have been a cartoon; anybody else remember Song of the South? The introduction here is Song of the South with real actors.

Then, they showed the clip from the 1936 movie, which you can not rent from Netflix, with Paul Robeson. First, what a voice that man had. If you've never heard a recording of his, get one. Second, this movie is (of course) in black and white; and frankly, this looks like a real plantation. The slaves' clothes are not nice and clean and mended, and they don't smile. The line of men carrying bales of cotton up the ramp can barely carry them - the camera stays on one man who staggers so that I was sure he would fall. The dock workers gather behind Robeson (as Joe) to back him in the chorus, and they look grim. I don't know how much Robeson had to do with the staging; he was a well-known agitator. If the 1951 version is a too-sweet mint julep, this movie is a splash of cold water in the face. I'd love to see all of it.

Now let's talk about Can't Help Loving That Man, sung by the character Julie LaVerne, who turns out (in a major plot twist) to be "passing as white." Having heard Lena Horne sing that, any time anyone else sings it (and last night it was Debbie de Coudreaux, a brilliant mezzo, who sings at the Moulin Rouge in Paris), the voice I hear belongs to Lena, the interpretation is Lena's. Wow. I must get more of her recordings. So with her available, why did Ava Gardner sing the part in 1951? (She couldn't sing, by the way - they dubbed the voice. Lena Horne's interpretation of the song was better, too.) Because Lena Horne was mixed race - and the astounding reasoning of the mid-century world said that a mixed-race actress could not be allowed to play the part of a mixed-race character. Don't ask me. I don't understand any of it. I understand that it was a problem; hell, I grew up in the 1950s and didn't meet a black person until I was around 10. I've just known too many brilliant, capable black people since, musicians and non-musicians, for any of this to make any sense to me any more.

And it was clear from the discussion at the forum that we still have a problem. In 1999 at Indiana University, a very fine black tenor named Lawrence Brownlee sang Tamino in the Magic Flute, and some local Neanderthal wrote a letter to the editor complaining that it was "an abomination" for him to be kissing a white Pamina on stage. For a broader discussion of race in classical music, I recommend the San Francisco Classical Voice's review of the OEBS Forum.

We've come a long way - just think about those happy darkies in the 1951 movie - but we haven't come far enough yet.

Live Beethoven

I don't usually write reviews of concerts I attend; I'm not a music critic. But I attended a concert of the Oakland East Bay Symphony tonight, and I have to talk about this.

The concert ended with the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major, op. 15, with Sara Buechner at the piano. It had been a good concert - a rousing Russian Easter Overture, a lively Petrouchka, a new piece from a young composer. But the Beethoven was - amazing. Sara Buechner played the piano like no one I've ever heard - her playing was crystalline, and yet strong. The piano sounded so light that at first I thought it was a fortepiano, and then I remembered two things:

One, Beethoven didn't use the fortepiano; in fact, Beethoven is largely responsible for the modern concert grand.

Two, I've never heard a Beethoven piano concerto performed live before (really!). I've only heard recordings. And on recordings, they over-mike the piano to make it sound more "muscular." This is what the real thing sounds like - I just didn't realize it.

Frankly, I thought the performance was pretty close to perfect, although Maestro Morgan took the first movement a little slower than the recording I'm used to; but once he got into it, the first movement sounded wonderful, and the precision of the piano took over. And the third movement just ripped - I thought it would take the roof off the hall! That's why you go to live performances, in fact; you go to hear events like this - and it'll never be available on CD. The OEBS doesn't usually cut CDs. But it got a five-curtain-call standing ovation, from an audience that hadn't come to its feet all evening; and I ran into one of the French horn players after the concert, and he thought it was brilliant too.

Brava, Ms. Buechner! Brava!