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mating calls
I've come back from an acculturating performance of classical music by one of the San Jose State University orchestras, and i've reached the conclusion that humans who spend their time singing in the upper registers available to them, like male tenors and female sopranos, sound like crap. Maybe it's just that in so many classical pieces, they hit their tremolo buttons like a pedestrian hitting the Walk button, and it just gets old really fast. A vocal performance that i consider is forceful, evocative and beautiful is Clare Torry's in Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky". While today's soprano was technically pretty good, i couldn't lie back and enjoy the job she was doing, because not 5 seconds would go by before she would do something that i found grating. Plus, she had a goofy grin on her face, which was easily avoided by closing my eyes, sure, but it's just something else that bugged me...
Today's performance started with Paul Dukas's Fanfare, which i missed, a Händel harp concerto which was really nice, a Mozart piano concerto which was good but felt too long and wankarriffic (although the pianist was very, very good), then another Mozart piece with the soprano, another piece which composer i forget that featured a solo flautist (who seemed too preoccupied at times with looking pretty than playing her instrument with heart), and finally Tchaikovsky's March Slave, which was really quite good. I'm just not a classical music kind of guy, i guess. There's very few pieces i've found that move me; the one that comes to mind right now is John Adams's "The Chairman Dances". That one just builds up excitement, focuses your attention, then raises voices suddenly, "Hey!" "Hey!" and the main theme continues moving along. You can sense the motion. It's exciting. That's what i want out of classical music; it should give you the sense that the piece conveys a certain life, that it will endure, instead of just being a bunch of nerds in concert dress noodling on their most expensive possession.
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Also, regarding singing, I like sopranos who sing in the early music style, but yeah, I will gladly join you in detonating the ones who hit that tremolo button. I was at one recital where the highly regarded soprano sang Pergolesi's Stabat Mater in the modern operatic style and I just wanted her to STOP.
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I was there too, and I disagree. I didn't find her to be technically pretty good. She had a very poor range, and was unable to switch from her mid range to her high range with the smoothness that I've heard in even "technically good" singers, and her vibrato was way out of control. The piece she sang was a difficult one, and would have been much more enjoyable if it had been performed by a good musician. SJSU is known for their vocal music department, and I've heard performers of much higher caliber at previous concerts (those that I did not drag rone to.) I did not enjoy that piece at all, and I usually really like Mozart.
I found the rest of the concert very enjoyable. It was one of the best I've been to all year. Not to mention that my daughter had some oboe solo parts in the first Mozart piece, Concerto for Piano in C Major, K. 467, where she and the flute did a sort of play and answer thing with each other, and did very well.
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