The Desolation of Tolkien

Yesterday afternoon I sat through The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second instalment of Peter Jackson's elaborate adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel. This Composer's Notebook post isn't about Howard Shore's score and I say sat through because the film, like the book, is episodic and I had no idea how much of the story I would be treated to before it ended.

This was complicated by additions to the plot (whether originating with the creative team or inferred from other Tolkien works I can't say) which postponed the inevitable destruction of Laketown by Smaug, the Dragon, until this time next year.

I'm not crazy about the book. I read the LOTR in my late teens and have re-read it a couple of times. But I first read the Hobbit aloud to a class of 11 year olds. I subsequently read it aloud to children perhaps a half dozen times. It's not an ideal Read-Aloud novel. It's overly long and wordy. But, because most of the characters are male, because it is a fantasy adventure and because it is so easy for boys to identify with the protagonist, it engages them in a way that most other books can't. It has mature world view, and literary and artistic merit. Reading such a book aloud to children was a way to share these values with my students.

Many of the criticisms of the first film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey were made precisely because the movie was much like the first part of the book. The book is a short epic and a picaresque adventure besides. It goes on for 365 pages of small type in paperback. Both film and book take some time to get going, even drag a bit. But the first part of the book is only the set-up and was never intended (as critics thought the film was) to stand on its own.

I enjoyed The Desolation of Smaug less than the first movie because it's so unlike the novel. Characters are added like Tauriel, a female elf warrior, for example, who, armed with a bow, reminded me of the publicity shots of The Hunger Games.

Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel

There are orc battles, reminiscent of the LOTR movies. At one point, as Legolas bounced across a raging river, slaying orcs as he went, the viewer might easily be watching a video game. Legolas, incidentally, isn't a character in Tolkien's The Hobbit. He's introduced in the LOTR.

Orlando Bloom as Legolas

This time, Jackson has turned The Hobbit into another fantasy-action film, much like any other fantasy-action film.

It's one thing to write an original story, with an original setting and characters, as James Cameron did with Avatar, and quite another to take an established literary classic like The Hobbit and alter it so much that it hardly resembles its source beyond the broad plot outline.

It's what happened to the James Bond novels after the first two films. By the end of the sixties only the books' titles and Bond himself remained in the films.

Sir Thomas Sean Connery as James Bond

In the case of The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug, it's my opinion that it's really too bad, but I will go back and see the end of the story at this time next year, as will millions of other paying customers. This film is, after all, commercial art.

The Xmas Choral Season Commences in Hamilton with the Mac Choirs

The Annual Yule Yell, as the Hamilton Spectator's former music critic Hugh Fraser dubbed it, has begun in earnest. Unfortunately, I started to hear Xmas music several weeks ago in stores and on television. Frankly, the second time I heard Gene Autrey sing Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer was already once too many and that was long ago. Personally, I think there should be a law banning commercial use of seasonal music before American Thanksgiving.

Nonetheless, I took in the concert by the McMaster Choirs under Rachel Rensink-Hoff on Friday night at Central Presbyterian Church in Hamilton. It wasn't quite December yet but the choir, a credit course for some, must wrap up its activities before the end of the school term.

I've no official connection to McMaster but my wife taught there for more than 20 years and I accompanied her to many concerts by the Mac choir conducted by Philip Sarabura (now conductor of the Brantford Symphony and violinist in the Hamilton Philharmonic), David Holler (now conductor of the Fanshawe Choir, the Gerald Fagan Singers and the Mohawk Community Choir) and, at present, Rachel Rensink-Hoff. Each demonstrated his/her professional expertise and personal taste through his/her choice of music for this choir of about 100 members.

This time, it was a diverse program. They sang 4 different settings of O Magnum Mysterium (one in English). Except for three selections, the program was comprised entirely of modern music or modern arrangements (i.e. post 1970).  There was the celebrated O Magnum Mysterium by the Spanish High-Renaissance composer Thomás Luis Victoria, an elaborate sectional Ave Maria by Felix Mendelssohn with tenor solo, semi-choir and organ (expertly played by Central's Music Director Paul Grimwood) and The Three Kings composed by Canadian choral music icon Healy Willan.

Doctor Rensink-Hoff may have chosen so much music written specifically for the sort of choir she conducts (i.e. a university chorus) as an antidote to last year's seasonal offering, a full-blown performance of Handel's Messiah. In this concert she demonstrated that she is a highly skilled and knowledgeable choral conductor, eliciting a diverse and polished musical performance from her young performers.

 Professor Rachel Rensink-Hoff

She must have considered, in her programming choices (aside from the obvious consideration of difficulty) how the music would be received by her singers and the audience. No conductor is likely to choose repertoire which she knows will be disliked by either, however much she might like it herself. She is also a Music Educator and, even though many of her choristers are not singing in the choir for credit, she has a responsibility to provide them with a balanced and enriching musical experience and, although the program was very heavily weighted to new music, it was varied and of very high quality. Certainly, the performance suggested that the choristers enjoyed the music a lot.

She may not have given much thought to how the audience would react. This is, after all, a school choir and the audience must have been made up, for the most part, of the chorister's families who, as any music teacher knows, will be impressed with whatever their children sing. Any audience would have loved this concert and this one gave it the seemingly obligatory standing O.

My professional chorister's ear was most impressed by the 35 voice Women's Choir. Typically such a university group is made up of the women who, for whatever reason, aren't singing in the SATB group. They sang beautifully, notably in the three pieces (God Will Give Orders and All His Angels by Sarah Quartel and Nada Te Trube by Joan Szymko) with 'cellist Kirk Starkey. Conductor Rensink-Hoff clearly knows her craft to be able to coax such sound and interpretation from what might be her least promising singers.

As for the full choir, highlights included Vaclav Neylybel's Estampie Natalis (with percussion and Mac music professor David Gerry's piccolo), an exciting performance. I also enjoyed hearing such beautiful singing in the glorious O Nata Lux by American Morten Lauridsen.

It was, altogether, a very enjoyable evening of quality choral singing.

Interview with singer and actor Reid Spencer

Here's a link to my recent interview with Reid Spencer with whom I worked during my time in the chorus of the Canadian Opera Company. He's a fascinating fellow to talk to, especially for someone, like me, who has an interest in singing and the various form of musical theatre, which includes opera. Little of that discussion made it into this piece, however, which is intended for a much more general audience.

None the less, there's lots of interesting biographical information and the url of his website through which those who'd be interested in studying privately with him, or otherwise contacting him, can get in touch.

Falstaff at Opera Hamilton

I went to see Verdi's comic masterpiece, Falstaff, on Tuesday night. The buzz from the Spec columnist and online blogs was that it was a great show, but I'm sceptical and wasn't sure, based on my experience with other OH productions, what to expect.

John Fanning with Falstaff padding

What I got was a wonderful theatrical and musical experience. In this smallish theatre with a thirty-one piece orchestra the opera came off almost as a chamber piece from near the middle of Row E.

I was disappointed to see such a sparse crowd, especially since OH continues to make tickets to these Tuesday performances available for $30 on WagJag. There are two more performances (Thursday, Oct. 24 and Saturday the 26th) and if there's any possibility of getting to one of them I'd encourage you enthusiastically, but you won't get in for 30 bucks.

Falstaff is pronouncedly unlike any of Verdi's other operas. Verdi took a 16 year break after Aida, wrote Otello and then didn't write Falstaff until 6 years after that, at the age of 80. I wonder what Verdi had been listening to which resulted in the extraordinary solo ensemble writing which is so different from that of his other operas.

The principal demand in staging this opera, is to move the singers around on stage and provide interesting things for them to do while, at the same time, positioning them such that they can always see the conductor because so much of the music is complex and moves so quickly. The men's and the women's parts are often written as two teams in the numerous ensembles, sometimes scooting along simultaneously in different metres. It's quite possible to solve the problem with a static staging in which the players find their mark and stand on it. That was not the case last night.

Allison Grant's staging was detailed and followed, for the most part, Boris Godovsky's axiom that the movement in opera should proceed from the rhythm and structure of the music. There was lots of appropriate comic stage business but I didn't find that it distracted from the singing.The performers were always in sync which tells me that the stage director understood this challenge.

This is an ensemble piece and the ensemble singing was impressive. Moreover, the casting was appropriate both from a physical and vocal standpoint, and the voices complemented one another.

I didn't much like the spartan set which reminded me of community theatre. It got tiresome to see fully costumed people hiding behind parts of the set and laundry on a line. On the other hand, the entire production would probably fit in a box van. It is usually better to budget for really good singers and instrumentalists than elaborate sets.

Dundas baritone John Fanning sang the fat knight. He's got a big baritone voice and has sung the Dutchman in Der fliegende Höllander which is usually cast with a bass-baritone so that tells you something. He's sung Wotan in the Das Ring des Niebelungen, Mandryka In Strauss's Arabella (at the Met) and the villains in Les Contes de Hoffman among numerous other leading roles in major houses. Fanning had a really good night showing lots of different colours and dynamics in his singing and his top notes became freer as the evening went on.

James Westman, as Ford/Fontana, provided an excellent foil to Fanning's Falstaff. We last heard him at OH as Conte de Luna in Trovatore and I wondered whether there'd be sufficient contrast between his baritone voice and Fanning's. Fanning, the older singer who's sung lots of big German roles, has a broader, more mature sound and Westman's voice seems positively lyric in contrast. Excellent casting by David Speers and his team.

Soprano Lynn Fortin anchored the women's ensemble and was excellent both in her vocalizations and acting. It's a peculiar fact that neither Alice Ford or Meg Page (sung capably by Ariana Chris) has neither an aria nor a substantial duet to sing. This didn't prevent Fortin from holding the stage and the audience's attention in her scenes.

Lynne McMurtry expertly handled the role of Dame Quickly. James McClennan was an aptly blustering and vocally strong Dr. Caius. Jon Paul Décosse (Pistola) and Jeremy Blossey (Bardolfo) both sang excellently and played the characters broadly with lots of comic interplay.

Sasha Dijihanian was a delightful Nanetta singing some ravishing sustained high notes in her duets with tenor Theo Lebow as Fenton. He's a pretty feisty singer and I was pleased to hear his ringing top notes sounding every bit the Italian tenor.

Conductor and General Director David Speers got the most out of the orchestra and I didn't miss the big orchestra as I had in Trovatore and Rigoletto.

The new chorus master, Sabatino Vacca has solved the chorus problem, for the time being, by reducing the choir to sixteen voices. However, there's precious little chorus singing in Falstaff. Who knows what he'll do about Carmen (in April) which has a whole lot of demanding choruses?

If you've been reading these recounts you know I don't usually give such unreserved praise to opera productions. I've got to hand it to Opera Hamilton for this one, though.

Peter Grimes at the COC

We attended Tuesday night's performance of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes, performed by the Canadian Opera Company at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto. The performance was not sold out. Indeed, the audience thinned out somewhat as the evening went on.

I'm not very fond of Britten's music (in spite of having performed quite a lot of it) and find the subject of this opera to be rather dreary. Britten adopted a kind of pan-diatonicism, gleaning his harmonic materials from the notes of his melodies and then adding polytonality (playing different streams of the texture in different keys). This results in music which is at once tonal and curiously harmonically static. To my ear, the music often doesn't have a clear tonal direction. You can hear this clearly in The Four Sea Interludes, adapted from the opera, which are a staple of the Twentieth-Century orchestral repertoire. Productions of the opera are mounted at major opera houses about as often as those other 20th Century operatic masterpieces, Poulenc's Les Dialogues Des Carmelites and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress.

On this occasion, all three acts were played on single set (the back wall of which is brought forward on the stage at one point). The set represents a church hall with a raised proscenium stage at the back. It looks very like a church or community hall or even an elementary school gymnasium but has windowed doors and clerestory windows on both sides and skylights in the ceiling allowing for very effective lighting effects, especially during the interludes in the opera.

The director's conceit is that George Crabbe (played by Thomas Hauff), upon whose poem the libretto is based, is there on stage imagining his poem coming to life and sometimes even interacting with the characters.

Ben Heppner

Last night, Tenor Ben Heppner took the title role. He had cancelled the première and wasn't in very good voice for last night's performance either. He warmed into it as the evening went on, though, and sang pretty effectively in the second and third acts. The role is a demanding one from a dramatic point of view and his acting certainly didn't suffer from whatever vocal discomfort he was experiencing. His portrayal of Grimes mad scene in the third act was very powerful.

Ileana Montalbetti

Soprano Ileana Montalbetti was cast as Ellen Orford. According to the program notes this is her first really big role. She was a dramatically effective Ellen and sang much of the role proficiently, especially when singing alone or with the orchestra, although much of it was full out. The broad vibrato of her top notes battled with Heppner's in their first act duet and affected the tuning of the women's quartet (with Auntie and the two nieces). She possesses a fine instrument, however, and I look forward to hearing her in other repertoire where this characteristic of her vocal production will be less critical.

Alan Held

Bass-Baritone Alan Held sang and portrayed Captain Balstrode, Grimes only friend, and was the outstanding individual performer of the evening with a strong voice and excellent dramatic skills. He's done big Wagner roles in major houses and it was clear from his performance that he'd be at home there as well.

I was also impressed with Peter Barrett playing Ned Keene, although all the singers playing secondary roles (five of them COC Ensemble products) were very fine. Special mention must go to American Mezzo Judith Christin as the laudanum addled town gossip, Mrs. Sedley.

The COC orchestra, under Maestro Johannes Debus played brilliantly. There was impressive ensemble playing from the brasses and lovely playing of the many dissonant passages in the high woodwinds (there's an Eb Clarinet in the orchestra). Concertmaster Marie Bérard and Principal Cellist Bryan Epperson both took beautiful solo turns.

The real stars of the night have to be the Sandra Horst's COC chorus. There's a lot of chorus singing in this opera and, as opera choruses go, it's pretty difficult music. They gave a nuanced performance, sometimes subtle and quiet (some stunning off-stage singing), sometimes very loud and dramatic. They portrayed, to a person, the Borough itself, as a dramatic character and Grimes' real theatrical adversary.

There are five more performances, closing on Oct. 26. I encourage you to attend one of them. This is, all things considered, a wonderful production and we're not likely to see this opera performed again in Toronto any time soon.

Fine Arts Quartet at the AGH

I went to hear the Fine Arts Quartet last Sunday afternoon in the Tannenbaum Pavillion at the Art Gallery of Hamilton with some trepidation.

Fine Arts Quartet
Ralph Evans, Efim Boico: violins
Juan Miguel Hernandez: viola, Robert Cohen: cello

It interested me that they were going to play some relatively new music (by Corigliano and Glass). I had read the impressive ensemble's history so I knew they'd be really good players. It was in an attractive venue. I could be there in 15 minutes (even with Beckett Drive still closed) and I wouldn't have to pay for parking.

On the other hand, I'm no aficionado of solo string music in spite of having written considerable orchestral music. My experience as a beginning violinist at Teacher's College left me with the utmost respect for those who can coax beautiful sounds from bowed string instruments. For me, beginning to learn to play violin as an adult was an exercise in contortionism and few sounds (dare I say noises) are more unpleasant than those that come from the instrument of a beginning violinist.

The players were seated on a raised platform on the long wall opposite the floor to ceiling windows. The room was about two-thirds filled but I was told that they usually sell out. In this configuration there are, I estimate, 150 chairs. The sound is good, for string quartet at least, and even sitting in the back row I had a good view of all the players who were about 30 feet away.

They opened with the Beethoven Quartet in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2. This is Beethoven in mid-career when he was 29 years old. It's a cheerful piece with lots of contrast and reminded me of Piano Sonatas of the same period. So far as I could tell, the playing was really wonderful. I wasn't prepared for the range of articulations and dynamics, nor for the incredibly tight ensemble playing which continued throughout the recital.

They followed with John Corigliano's Snapshot: Circa 1909. It's a one movement piece inspired, Corigliano writes, by a photo of two children: his uncle with a guitar and his father holding a violin (he would grow up to be, for 25 years, the Concert Master of the New York Philharmonic). It's a thoroughly tonal piece in which the violist often plays pizzicato in imitation of a guitar. It provided an interesting counterpoint to the Beethoven which had opened the concert.

They closed the first half with the Philip Glass String Quartet #2 . I really like Glass's music and have heard lots of it including a dazzling performance of Akhnaten at the English National Opera. In this case there are four movements, adapted from incidental music for a stage work, Company, based on a short novel by Samuel Beckett. The music is typical Glass Minimalism, generated out of short arpeggiated figures that are presented at the opening of each movement, the "themes" being closely related. Each movement ended suddenly as if the players had run out of music to play.

After a break the performers played Franz Schubert's D Minor Quartet. It's called Death and the Maiden because the second movement is made of variations on the first section of the Schubert Lied Der Tod und das Mädchen.

The Fine Arts Quartet gave a tour de force performance of this piece which must be a pillar of the string quartet repertoire. It allows the performers the opportunity to display virtuosity both individually and collectively as Schubert the Romantic requires many tempi, dynamics and, most importantly, moods of them. I came away very impressed.

I'll certainly be back to hear more from this series. There are four more recitals in Chamber Music Hamilton's series this season.  They're $30 at the door and are all at the AGH, all but one on a Sunday afternoon.

I should mention that at the next concert on Sun. Nov 17,  the Cecilia Quartet will play the première performance of a new piece by Abigail Richardson-Schulte, the Composer-in-Residence of the Hamilton Philharmonic.

Incidentally, subscribers (and Hamilton Spectator readers) learned that the February 15th HPO concert will be the last for their conductor Jaime Sommerville. The Orchestra has already struck a search committee to find a new conductor.

It's too bad he's leaving. The orchestra has flourished under his leadership. He also established the What Next? new music festival and is an advocate for New Music. We attended their final concert in the spring and decided on that basis to become HPO subscribers!
















 It

A Little About Cover Songs

Everyone knows what a "cover" is. Some singer or band has a hit and sometime later another artist records the same song in a different version. Sometimes the new version is a copy of the original. Sometimes, not. One of my faves is the David Bowie's version of the Beach Boys God Only Knows. It's very different from the original. A lot edgier.

In the case of the song which is the subject of this blog, I heard the cover version first, really liked it and only then did I become familiar with the original. I wish it'd been the other way around.

I had listened, many times, to Leslie Feist's cover of the Bee Gees disco hit, Love You, Inside and Out.

I didn't know the original until I looked it up on YouTube, but Feist's version is pretty neat.

Feist

I've a special place for the Bee Gees because the first professional band in which I played performed a medley of their 60s hits. I quit the band to go away to university and I didn't listen to the Bee Gees (or much other popular music) for years after that. I've never seen Saturday Night Fever and was only vaguely aware of the Bee Gees disco recordings.

Bee Gees in the Sixties

I should mention that the Brother's Gibb had a string of pop song hits in the late sixties, kind of disappeared, then returned with a vengeance some ten years later with a parade of disco hits from their Platinum selling album Spirits Having Flown, some of which are played in Saturday Night Fever, a dance-drama in which John Travolta played his breakout film role.

John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever

The original recording of this great song, has a mix of 1979 synthesizer sounds and acoustic instruments including strings, horns and percussion, accompanying Robin Gibbs' high solo vocals and two of his brothers singing the harmony lines (all in falsetto) all produced by Robert Stigwood.

It's just a pop song, but a helluva pop song. The lyrics are hardly great poetry but the same has been said of some of the standards in the Great American Songbook.

Pay particular attention to the rising string scale that usually follows words "inside and out" (beginning of the chorus) in sixteens (doh, re, mi, fah, sol---). I've linked to this version with the lyrics on purpose.

Twenty-five years on, Leslie Feist covered this song. This time it's mostly her voice and electronics. It's produced (and some of the instruments played) by Gonzalez who was Feist's collaborator and producer at the time. With today's technology, it's hard to know what acoustic instruments are there, but every sound, whatever its source, is clearly placed in the mix. Especially with headphones, the listener can pick out all the individual instruments.

What a difference in the sound! The clean and detailed 2004 version is very different from the "over the top" full Disco orchestration of the original, replete with doublings and reverb. There are so many different sounds mixed together in the original that it's sometimes difficult to figure out who's playing what.

The tempo is a little faster. The form of the song (including the shortened verse after the first chorus) and all the main features of the original arrangement are still there. You'll notice the ascending scale passage that follows the lyrics "inside and out" is played on a synth instead of violins.

The meaning of the lyrics is transformed when a woman sings the song. I'll bet that's what attracted Feist to the song in the first place (and that's why I suggested you read the lyrics, first time through).





Really good songs can be altered and re-arranged. Many pop songs lose their centre when they're pulled apart and reassembled. It was the arrangement and the total effect of all the components that was interesting, not the song itself.

Black Eyed Peas songs are like that. They're sectional, depending on changes of instrumentation and the band's two vocalists to hold the audience's attention. Songs like I Gotta Feeling wouldn't survive having their elaborate arrangements removed and being performed by one or two fully clothed performers.

Inside and Out, transformed into a ballad, might even stand up to a solo performance by one singer with a guitar. Someone like Feist. I'd like to hear that.