Not that anyone likes to see other people lose their jobs, but the writing has been on the wall for Tower Records for quite some time now. Anyways, turnabout is fair play and maybe Tower is just getting their due after driving so many small and independent record stores out of business, at least here in the Bay Area. Maybe when we mourn for Tower we should also shed a little tear for Leopold's, and Underground Records, and Banana Records, and the Record Factory as well. All the great record stores are gone now.
But that's all water under the dam. The good news, however, is that Tower is having a liquidation sale. Yep, 25% off everything in the store, which for a music junkie like me means it's time to dust off the credit card and do a little bin surfing. I went down there a couple of days ago and the pickings were pretty slim, but I did manage to pick up one notable CD that I want to tell you about. Yeah, you know what's coming. Just what you've always wanted. Another Dead Cat CD Review!
Leila Josefowicz is a problem for me. On the one hand I read rave reviews of her work, and yet whenever I listen to her she just sounds so average, which can only mean either I'm not listening right or the rest of the world is out of it's frickin' mind. The critics call her Prokofiev brilliant and then I hear it and just can't for the life of me figure out what all the fuss is about. I figure it must have something to do with my lack of musical knowledge or understanding because there's obviously something going on here that's way over my head. Still, I know what I like and I know when I like something enough to want to buy it, and the fact is I don't own any of her CD's. Not unless I can get it at 25% off, that is.
The CD I bought came out last year and was her premier effort for the Warner Classics label. It's called "Leila Josefowicz: Beethoven Ravel Salonen Grey Messiaen". I always like to read the booklet when I buy a new CD, so that was the first thing I did. That's usually a good to idea, especially if some of the pieces are unfamiliar, but not always. For example...The booklet began with a short little paragraph by Leila which explained absolutely nothing. Hey, that's ok, maybe she's not a word person. The real problem came after that with the piece written by her accompanist John Novacek, who writes prose so thick that it should be sold to the DoD to armor plate their Humvees. If his goal was to make the reader stupid then I guess he succeeded, but if he was trying to provide a little background on the musical selections, then all I can say is "look John, I'm a blogger, not a music professor, ok?" Here's how he explains the Beethoven Violin Sonata No. 10:
"...it's characteristic techniques (ecstatic employment of the trill, rhapsodic digressions, continuity of the multimovement design, fugato), Opus 96 is the first incontrovertible indication of Beethoven's late style."
Oh really? I couldn't have explained it better myself, and frightening as it might seem, I actually understand a little of what you're talking about. Here's John Novacek on the Ravel Violin Sonata in G major:
"...a gentle flute-like melody that falls and rises upon the Lydian mode on G. But for Ravel the antique is not a call to introspection, it is the necessary exotic component of a stylized tonal object."
Exactly what I was thinking, although I would characterize it more as a "stylized tonal doohickey" rather than "object." Anyways, I hate finding this kind of stuff in my CD booklet. If you're writing a college text or academic paper then fine, use the language that suits your audience. But don't put it in a CD booklet, John. C'mon, it's like have a chemistry professor write ad copy for a can of soda. Sure, there are important things we all should know about Potassium Benzoate and Phenylketonurics, but you know most people are just interested in how it tastes,
I'll just mention that there are a couple of other pieces in the booklet as well. One is by Mark Grey which I'll discuss later, and the other is by Esa-Pekka Salonen, current music director of the L.A. Phil. Salonen's piece is actually much better and clearer than Novacek's, and it's too bad he didn't write the entire booklet. Here's Salonen writing about the "Lachen verlernt":
"Lachen verlent is essentially a chaconne, which in this case means that there is a harmonic progression that repeats itself several times."
Now you see John, that wasn't so hard. Salonen introduces a concept, and then explains what it is. Maybe there's something we all can learn from that.
But on to the music itself.
There are 2 CD's in this release. The first contains Olivier Messiaen's Theme and Variations, Ravel's Violin Sonata in G major, and Mark Grey's San Andreas Suite for solo violin. Two glorious successes and a dud, as it turns out. The Messiaen Theme and Variations leads things off and is a very simple piece, actually. It starts out very restless and haunted, and then over the course of a very short 10 minutes or so it resolves itself into something remarkably radiant and peaceful. What I never heard in Josefowicz's playing before I finally heard here, and that is an intensely personal style and close connection to the listener. There is something very soft in her approach, not dynamically soft, not pianissimo(?), but something soft and intimate in the way she expresses herself that works beautifully with this piece. The danger of being that open and intimate with the listener, of course, is that you run the risk of sounding cloying or mawkish, but there's none of that here. It's a very pure sound.
Josefowicz continues next with the Ravel Violin Concerto in G major, a somewhat more familiar piece, and again establishes that same sense of closeness and intimacy. Like the Messiaen, this is also another french piece, and although I never thought about it before, a close, personal touch really brings out a lot of the flowers and colors of french music. Josefowicz has a real feel for that, and I don't think I've ever heard this piece played better. In fact, this is the first time I've heard it played and really loved it. I hope there's more 20th century french music in her recording pipeline.
On the other hand, she might do us all a big, fat favor and never record Mark Grey again. I guess this Mark Grey guy is a friend of hers and he composed his San Andreas Suite especially for her, so there was probably no way she could NOT record it, but man is it boring. It's really nothing more than a 12 minute finger exercise, and a long 12 minutes at that. According to the booklet, Grey composed it on his guitar with the four middle strings tuned the same as the violin. You know what, Mark, it sounds like a piece composed on a guitar with the middle four strings tuned the same as a violin. I don't know. Maybe it's fun to play, but I hated it. Next CD please.
On CD number 2 Josefowicz gives us the Salonen Lachen verlernt for solo violin, the Beethoven Violin Sonata No. 10 in G major, and the Brahms Scherzo in C minor. I don't know how to describe the Lachen verlernt except to describe my reaction to it, so please pardon me if I get a little weird here. Just go with me on this.
When we hear a piece of music being played we are always aware of the sounds being produced, but rarely stop to think about the silence that surrounds those sounds. Miles Davis, the great jazz trumpeter, loved silence and knew how to use silence, but he was an exception to the rule. To me it's always seemed that musicians treat silence as an interval, the period between stopping and and starting, and though aware of its presence, they don't use it the way that Miles did. They aren't as fascinated by those "spaces between notes" the way he was. Silence is almost like the enemy, a big void to be filled, and musicians carefully test and re-test their sound so as not to be swallowed up in the vacancy and vastness of the spaces they occupy.
So what am I getting at. Well, when I listen to Josefowicz play the Lachen verlernt, for some reason I can't help hearing the silence. From the very first time I heard her play it I just got this image in my head of a musician in a silent studio trying to fill that room with sound, and of a constant back and forth struggle between the two forces. The ominous stillness of the room, and the violin desperately trying to breath some life into it. I'm sure if Salonen heard me talk about it like this he'd say I was off my rocker, but that's how the piece sounds to me. And it's fascinating. Lots of virtuoso stuff, of course, but that struggle is what keeps me fascinated. I think it's my favorite piece on the entire CD.
After the Lachen verlent comes the Beethoven Violin Concerto No. 10, and there couldn't be a starker contrast. You leave this silent little room or studio and are instantly transported into Beethoven's world. No silence there, but a few problems instead. As much as I like the 20th century pieces (except for that turd of piece that Mark Grey "composed"), her Beethoven brought me right back to where I was before. Namely, I don't get it.
The first movement is a bad omen in itself because it doesn't seem like Josefowicz and her accompanist John Novacek are working off the same notes. I don't know, I'm no Beethoven scholar, certainly not of John Novacek's calibur, but is the first movement supposed to sound so out of sync? Novacek pounding out the notes while Josefowicz floats in the background? It doesn't sound right to me. Fortunately, they seem to get it back together for the final three movements but I still don't get it. Where Josefowicz sounded so intimate and personal before, she sounds merely average here. That's the same problem I've always had with her. Why is it that something that sounds so average is, in fact, something extraordinary? I'm totally lost here, but I'll keep listening.
The Brahms Scherzo in C minor finishes the CD set and it's perfectly fine. Sort of a lighthearted, joyous little thing that finishes things off quite nicely. Nothing really to say about it, and this post is long enough as it is.
So there you have it. Did anyone actually read all that?
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