Sixteen Tons (or Please Pass the Gravy)

Isn't it great to get all that eating and relaxing behind you and settle back into the work week. Yeah, nothing like it. Somehow I feel a poem coming on.

There was a struggling man who asked
For a day free from trying
There was a suffering man who asked
For just one day of dying
There was a weeping man who asked
For just one day of living
But never was the man who asked
For a Monday to follow Thanksgiving

I think Emily Dickinson wrote that. OK, maybe that was my pen at work, but seriously, as we pause to remember the food shouldn't we also take a little time to pause and reflect a little on friends and family and all that togetherness. Of course we should, and it brings to my mind a great old saying from some guy whose name I can't remember right now, but that just seems to sum it all up -

A hotel may not be a home, he said,
but it's better than being a houseguest.

How true, how true. Here's hoping you had a great Thanksgiving, and for God's sake I hope you didn't wash your hands using the "good" towels.

The Old Man And The Sea

They had a story about some 12 year old composer on 60 minutes last night, and I got to tell you it really creeped me out. According to the story, he started composing when he was 2 and now he walks around all the time waiving his hands and hearing this music in his head. In fact it's so bad he feels like he'll go crazy if he doesnt' get the music out of his head and write it down on paper. Now is it just me or doesn't that remind you of that old Edgar Allen Poe story, you know The Tell Tale Heart where this guy keeps hearing this beating heart until it slowly drives him mad. Eeewww, creepy.

Unfortunately, they didn't really air much of his music so it's hard to tell if it's any good or not, but even if it's not it doesn't matter much because, well, he's only 12. Of course it'll be a different story 10 years from now when he's no longer a precocious little boy. When that happens people will be judging him more by his music than his prodigious gift and he'll need to deliver. Hopefully he won't turn into another Bobby Fischer or something like that. You know, gifted child that grows into a completely wacko adult. I wish him well, though.

And speaking of prodigies, whatever happened to Sarah Chang? Oh, I know she's still recording and playing and she is still immensly talented, but it just seems that she's one of those prodigies that has never really had that big breakthrough CD that everyone expected. I've got a couple of her CD's and I like her playing, but neither of them are what I would call "breakthroughs". They're just too traditional, too much like everyone else to stand out from the crowd. Sure, traditional will get you played on the local radio station, but are there a lot of people who feel an urgent need to get the new Sarah Chang CD when it comes out? There may be some, but for the most part it's just good, solid, polished work that is almost too ordinary in it's goodness to get really excited about (if that makes any sense).

Her rival, or so they say, is my personal favorite, and even though I think this rivalry stuff is a lot of B.S., I do think that Ms. H.H. has already established a more distinctive body of work than Ms. S.C. It's all subjective, of course, and many people prefer the traditional, down-the-middle approach, but c'mon, it's not breakthrough, and I'm afraid that I'm still waiting for the Sarah Chang CD that really knocks my socks off. Maybe someone should tell her she's not a prodigy anymore and it's time for her to do some stretching and growing.

And speaking of H.H., I see that her latest CD is selling rather well. It was number 10 on Tower Records top selling list and in the top 50 over at Itunes. Pretty good for a CD that I'd characterize as being a little on the difficult side. At least it was for me, although I think I finally I understand it, or misunderstand it, as the case may be. Who can tell a correct interpretation from an incorrect one anyways. Just as long as you get some meaning from it, who cares? Of course you want to know what meaning I found, so I'll tell you, but first I should explain it took quite a bit of wandering before I finally found it.

My first wandering was back down to the record store to find another recording of the Elgar Concerto besides H.H's. They only had one other, but it just happened to be by one of my other favorite violinists so I bought the Nigel Kennedy version and brought it home. To say it was a different from H.H.'s would be a gross understatement, but then anyone with even a passing acquaintance with classical music knows that Kennedy (or is it Nigel Kennedy? I can't keep it straight. Let's just call him Nigel) is a very different violinist than H.H. Where H.H. is still and precise, Nigel is fanciful and flamboyant, and let me tell you he really takes that Elgar concerto for a ride. And yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

So that got me thinking that maybe H.H. has taken a serious misstep with her recording and gotten in a little over her head. I mean by the time I finished playing the Nigel CD my ears were burning and I didn't hear any of that fire anywhere on H.H.'s CD - just an odd sense of incompleteness. Well, I thought, even the great ones produce a dud every now and then, and Ms. H is certainly no different. At least she tried to find her own way with the piece and that always counts for something.

Then I got another CD. This time it was not the violin concerto but rather a well-known and highly regarded recording of Elgar's cello concerto by Jacqueline du Pre, and it is a wonderful CD by the way and certainly worthy of the praise it receives. In fact, Jacqueline du Pre and H.H. are a little similar, in a way, in that they both seem to want to get out of the way of the performance and let the music have it's own voice, rather than say a Nigel Kennedy who wants to stand out in front and be the center of attention. Not that one approach is better than the other, but listeners will have their preferences.

Anyways, on the same CD with the cello concerto were recordings of Janet Baker singing 5 Sea Songs also by Elgar, and it was hearing those songs that gave me first real insight into the violin concerto. You see, the violin concerto is widely known to have been dedicated as some kind of remembrance or eulogy, perhaps, for an acquaintance of Elgar's named Alice Stuart-Wortley, and that's how I kept trying to hear the piece, as sort of an elegaic or spiritual composition, but it just didn't seem to work that way. Later I read an interview that H.H. had given and she described the piece as lyrical, which it certainly is, and said she had made the recording as sort of a gift or dedication to her father. That was interesting but not very useful, and I was still more drawn to Nigel's interpretation than H.H.'s.

Finally, though, after hearing Janet Baker sing the Sea Songs I had my epiphany, if it can be called an epiphany. The movement of the piece is what seems so strange. When Nigel plays it you don't really notice the movement because you are so overwhelmed by the pyrotechnics, but when H.H. plays it you become aware that this piece doesn't march, it doesn't dance, it doesn't sing dirges or stroll through the woods - it swells, like the tides. It rises and falls, and rises and falls, and sometimes as it recedes it leaves behind little tide pools, or should I say "tone" pools, that glisten for a while until the music rises up to swallow them again. Instead of thinkng in linear terms I began to think in cyclical terms, I began to think of the ocean when I listened to H.H. play, and the suddenly the whole thing fell into place. I tell you, if you can clear your mind and just listen for the tides, this becomes an incredibly beautiful piece. I think that rather than being a miss this may be H.H.'s best CD to date. It gets my vote for best CD of 2004, although I don't think the critics like it nearly as much as I do. Still, a real breakthrough that I just keep listening to over and over.

I wonder if H.H. would agree with me on this. Hmmm, probably not. "You ignorant dunce", she'd say, "that's not what I had in mind at all." Well, it's all in the ear of the beholder.