Boston, Mass.

: new concertos by Schuller and Birtwistle

Author(s): Rodney Lister
Source: Tempo, Vol. 65, No. 257 (JULY 2011), pp. 69-70
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23020858
Accessed: 15-11-2019 04:20 UTC

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Tempo 65 (257) 69-77 © 2011 Cambridge University Press
doi: 10.1017/S0040298211000283 Printed in the United Kingdom

FIRST PERFORMANCES

wind instruments,
Boston, Mass.: new concertos by Schuller and including, in the last move
Birtwistle ment, a climactic duet cadenza for the soloist and
the orchestral tuba.
The American tuba virtuoso Harvey PhillipsIt used to be that Schuller was a proud 12-tone
devoted his life to teaching and encouraging
composer, albeit one who mixed up serialism with
younger tuba players, promoting the tuba asjazz, both written and improvised, producing
music known by the name he coined for it, 'third
an instrument, and especially to expanding the
stream'. In these post-modern times he has moved
repertory for it. Phillips had a long and close asso
ciation with Gunther Schuller, both as a free-lance
away both from serialism and to some extent
musician in New York in the 1950s and 60s, and from jazz, to a more mild, generally modernist
as part of the administrative team at the New language. The four movements of the concerto,
England Conservatory during the early years arranged in a slow-fast-slow-fast order, partake of
when Schuller was president of that institution; this later style with handsome results, especially
their friendship continued when Phillips became in the third movement, a sort of aria for the tuba
a professor at Indiana University, where he taught with Bartokian shadings. The last movement,
from 1971 to 1994. Schuller wrote one of his best which begins with a slow introduction with omi
works, the Capriccio for tuba and chamber orches nous qualities, leading to an intensely energetic
tra, for Phillips in 1969; and before Phillips diedfast movement, manages to include, seamlessly,
in 2010, after he had already stopped playing the a relatively lengthy quotation from the Capriccio.
tuba due to the onset of Parkinson's Disease, he Roylance's performance of this genial, appealing
asked Schuller to write another work for tuba work was sovereign; the poise and polish of his
and orchestra. Thus Schuller's Second Tuba playing was matched by that of the orchestra. At
Concerto, which was given its first performance 85, Schuller seems to be hardly at all slowed down
by Mike Roylance, the tuba player of the Boston by age. Not only did he conduct the entire concert
Symphony, with the Boston University Symphony by the BU orchestra, which also contained the
Orchestra conducted by the composer, on 15 to The Creation by Haydn, and the Brahms
Prelude
February, is not only a major addition to Fourththe Symphony, but two hours before the
concert he was across town at the New England
tuba repertory, but also a testament to Schuller's
Conservatory, introducing a performance of his
respect, admiration, and affection for a dear friend,
personified by his instrument. Second String Quartet by the Borromeo Quartet.
Schuller's own career as an orchestral and jazz There was a certain amount of preliminary
musician and a virtuoso horn player, as well drama
as an in the few days before the first perform
ance of Harrison Birtwistle's Violin Concerto
active conductor or all sorts of music, has given
him an encyclopedic knowledge of the orchestra, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, during the
and he employs the full panoply of possibilities course of which James Levine, who has been
to highlight all the virtues of the tuba as plagued
a solo by a series of health problems for several
instrument, demonstrating its enormous range, years and who had cancelled the preceding con
its agility and flexibility in every register, ascert
welldue to illness, first announced that he was
unable
as its ability as a lyric, expressive instrument, capa to participate in any of remaining concerts
ble of long singing phrases. Since balance withofthe
the current season, and then, a day later, due to
those recurring health problems, resigned as the
orchestra is not a problem with the tuba, Schuller
did not need to clear out a registral space fororchestra's
the music director, leaving considerable
doubt about how the remainder of the season's
instrument. Instead he filled the orchestra's ranks
with other extraordinarily low instruments programming
- con might be changed and who might
be conducting the orchestra in those concerts.
trabassoon, contrabass clarinet, as well as other
The program containing the Birtwistle remained
low brass, including another tuba - and he revels
in the neighborhood made possible by suchasscor planned, with Marcelo Lehninger, one of
the BSO's assistant conductors. Although Mr.
ing: the beginning of the first movement featured
Lehninger's abilities are certainly considerable,
the soloist accompanied by five double basses,
and there are duets with the soloist and other
thelow
extremely high level of playing in the whole

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TEMPO

Turnage's
concert was probably attributable as much to themusic, it leaves no room for it. In Jerry
Springer
presence of Christian Tetzlarff, who played the imbalance didn't matter, since the text
in all
the works on the concert: this included,was dominant
as well as and the - relatively unambitious
the Birtwistle, Mozart's Rondo in C, K. 373 and
- music supported it. Here, it drives the music
the Bartok Violin Concerto No. 2. before it, leaving Turnage little room to demon
Birtwistle's Violin Concerto is in one move strate the scope of his imagination.
Anna Nicole begins promisingly: after a 'three
ment, lasting about 25 minutes. Its intense
bar overture'
dramatic quality is not as a result of movement or the chorus - as reporters: the men
of development but of what Birtwistle calledareend
in blue blazers and the women coiffed and
white-shirted,
less exposition, the continual tension caused by all holding microphones - begin
the rotation of fixed and unchanging, highly the tale of Anna Nicole Smith's life, their superbly
char
crisp
acterized musical identities, which is a quality delivery a tribute to the work of the chorus
his
music has always shared with that of Varese. master,
The Renato Balsadonna. It is, indeed, a Greek
chorus, assessing the situation for the audience.
part of the solo violin, which is almost constant
But the ironizing potential of this device is lost
throughout the work, has an intense and almost
delirious vocal quality, which seems new when virtually all the characters - Anna Nicole
in his
instrumental music. Over the course of the work
herself, her mother and father, her first husband
and more - likewise address themselves to the
the soloist is joined with the first flute, the piccolo,
audience in shallow self-justification; the distinc
a solo cello, the oboe, and the bassoon, respective
tion between foreground and background is lost.
ly, in a series of duets which Birtwistle describes
as 'a way of focusing the dialogue'. Although OncetheAnna has found in breast implants the solu
orchestra is large, there is always considerable tion
regto her lack of material progress, she attracts
istral space left for the violin, as a result of the attention of J. Howard Marshall, the doddery
which
oil-magnate who was to marry Anna Nicole, 63
there is, in a way that is quite remarkable, never
any problem with balance between the soloist years
andhis junior, in 1994. His death three scenes
into Act II leaves Stern, Anna Nicole's lawyer, in
the orchestra; in fact the texture is extraordinarily
control of her life (in another overused ironiz
transparent throughout, despite its considerable
ing effect, Stern has been gatecrashing the action
complexity. The concerto is profoundly beautiful
and its drama is deeply satisfying; the perform
since early in Act I and pushed offstage for joining
it too
ance of Tetzlaff, Lehninger, and the orchestra wassoon). Slowly Anna's life collapses around
magisterial. her: she puts on weight, becomes drug-depend
Rodney Lister ent, becomes a public circus, loses the son from
her first marriage to an overdose and finally zips
herself into a body-bag and dies.
In spite of some heroic performances - chief
London, Royal Opera House: Turnage's 'Anna among them Eva-Marie Westbroek as Anna
Nicole' Nicole, and with Alan Opie as a spirited but wob
bly Marshall and Gerald Finley an eloquent and
Mark-Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole joinsinsincere
the Stern - Anna Nicole fails to engage: it's
too shallow to be human drama, and too know
growing list of new operas at Covent Garden
ing to be effective comedy. The very choice of
which turn out to be pups: Nicholas Maw's Sophie's
Choice in 2002, Thomas Ades's The Tempest insubject
2004 condemns the entire undertaking to a
and Lorin Maazel's 1984 in 2005 (not a Covent
degree of artificiality. Non-Americans expressing
Garden commission, that one: Maazel rented the
themselves through the language of American
popular culture are on a hiding to nothing (any
space) were all, in their different ways, misjudged;
likewise Anna Nicole. To be fair, Turnage's one
work,who has ever heard a Scottish aristocrat say
more music-theatre than opera, doesn't attempt'fuck'
to will know what I mean); and in The Ice
Break, on this very stage in 1977, Michael Tippett
scale the existentialist heights of the three earlier
proved spectacularly that high art embraces the
works, but it does claim to have a serious message
- basically, the old saw that money can't buyidiom
you of low art at its peril. With a more radical,
invasive,
happiness - and Anna Nicole has to be judged by assertive score, perhaps this socio-geo
graphical
its effectiveness as a parable as well as its quality as barrier to emotional impact could have
entertainment. been surmounted. But the problem remains that,
The libretto, by Richard Thomas, co-crea
throughout the two hours of action, Turnage's
music does little more than give rhythmic support
tor of Jerry Springer: The Opera, is the root of the
to the numbers presented onstage. At the begin
problem. Like Jerry Springer, it is word-driven and
so, instead of acting as a kind of coathanger forning of Act II he begins a touching urban nocturne

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