Philip Glass’s Satyagraha at The Metropolitan Opera

Opera librettos don’t really have a good reputation, a few librettists like Lorenzo Da Ponte and Hugo von Hoffmansthal are respected but often the libretto is either derided or not even mentioned when talking about opera. Its no wonder since the story is most often just a framework to give the work form, the real point being communicated by music. Phillip Glass realized this and deals with the problem by doing away with the liner story completely replacing it with meditations on the subjects work, philosophy and illuminating moments. When Mr. Glass jumped into public view with Einstein on the Beach this seemed as much a part of Minimalism as the music. I thought the combination was potent when I first saw Satyagraha in 1981 and still found it moving and effective when I saw at The Met on Monday.

Satyagraha has been translated as a compound of two Sanskrit words meaning, according to the Met Playbill as truth force or holding on to truth. The libretto is indeed in Sanskrit and is made of excerpts from the Bhagavad Gita and other sources that illuminate the opera’s subject - the ideas of peace, human rights and self respect that transformed Gandhi and through him Indians in South Africa and India and eventually others around the world, specifically Martin Luther King Jr. This may sound very static but I found the combination of the music played by a small orchestra of strings and woodwinds (with a single electronic keyboard), the production and words to be very effective. The music the first score Glass wrote for traditional rather than electronic instruments, when I first heard it I was amazed at the increased interest the traditional instruments add to the minimalist style. As conducted by second generation Glass specialist Dante Anzolini the music was meditative in just the way the opera demands. Its not that it doesn’t move its that it moves you in ways too subtle to think about but just right for feeling. The flutes and bassoons were particularly effective; they have been noticeably effective all season. The Chorus and soloists performed the music like theve been singing it all their lives. Richard Croft as Gandhi used his gentle tenor voice with true grace. I know some people are offended by Glass’s music but that is hard for me to understand since it works so well for me.

The production was by Phelim McDermott of the Improbable Theater Company was created jointly with The English National Opera and has already played successfully in London. While the production is respectful to the subject matter it is also fanciful in many places. I especially liked a bit when coat hangers came down from the ceiling as Gandhi, his supporters and the Indian workers took off their European closees, put them on the hangers leaving them in their traditional Indian garb. This scene simply said more both musically and theatrically than a more traditional opera ever could. If the first two acts were kind of George Grosz meets Julie Taymor, which ain’t bad, The last act, called King, was especially moving. As the act unfolded an actor mutely portrayed Dr. King giving his famous speech at the Washington Mall. Film of the event was also projected on the back of the stage. As the scene went on the window grew large enough to fill the entire back of the stage. In its way it reminds us that what started as a personal journey by one man grew to affect the whole world. In many was this production at the Met was done better than the one I saw in Brooklyn in 1981, but by far the best difference is that apartheid doesn’t exist in South Africa anymore.

Lang Lang, Tan Dun , New York Philharmonic

The great thing about attending a world primer is that you get to hear a piece without any pre-conceived notion about what you are about to listen to. Unfortunately the silly people who run the education department of the New York Philharmonic decided to have a speaker tell us what we were to think about Tan Dun’s new piano concerto before we heard it. The speaker was described as a ‘composer’, although I don’t know or much care exactly what he composes. He also played a video of him interviewing Tan Dun who said his piano concerto was like martial arts. I don’t know what this middle brow drivel is supposed to add to the musical experience but I suspect its one of the reasons more people don’t take classical music seriously. Fortunately it was easy to ignore the assault on our intelligence once the musicians came onstage and the concert proper commenced.

The piano concerto was clearly written with Lang Lang in mind, both his fiery percussive playing he is known for and there more lyrical style he seems to be moving towards. The concerto makes ample use of percussion including the solo piano. This aspect of the music is undeniably exciting. This concerto also lets the soloist go in the area his going as he becomes more mature and gives him lots of melody to play, which he does with greater feeling than I remember him displaying in the past. It must be remembered that both Tan Dun and Lang Lang play western music and the fleeting influence of Chinese music is an influence in the same way the folk music has influenced European composers for the last 100 years. It is hard to really judge the success of a new work on first hearing but it was an exciting performance featuring one of music’s most charismatic players. Lang Lang, Tan Dun and the conductor Leonard Slatkin received an extended standing ovation from what seemed to be a sold out house.

After intermission the Philharmonic played the complete ballet music from Stravinsky’s The Firebird. Mr. Slatkin did not seem to have a strong unifying conception of the music but the Philharmonic played both ensembles and solos with grace and precision. The audience certainly seemed to leave the concert happily and it was a fun evening. I couldn’t help but think that it’s a bit ironic that Stravinsky has become the composers to pair with a modern composer to keep the conservatives in the audience happy. This concert repeated 4 times Wednesday – Saturday, I attended on Thursday.

Richard Goode, Sir Colin Davis and The New York Philharmonic

Intelligence is hard thing to find in this world, even in the rarefied world of classical music, so it was with some delight that I noticed that all three concerts NYP concerts featuring conductor Sir Colin Davis and pianist Richard Goode were sold out. Mr. Davis and Mr. Goode may not be the flashiest musicians out there but the seem to consider the result of every gesture they make and the result makes you listen a little more closer to the music. This was useful since the first half of the program featured familiar pieces by Beethoven.

The first was the Leonore Overture No. 2. I always enjoy this whether played fast or slow, spirited or even perfunctory. Davis’s reading was more significant than most because he seems to remember its roots in the opera Leonore/Fidelio, which returns the music the composer’s intention in writing it. Davis places the offstage horns into the one of the upper tiers of the hall and their playing really reminds those of us who know the opera of the rescuers coming to save the day. This rendition is quite literally a condensed version of the opera, just as Beethoven meant it to be.

A piece like Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 is so popular it takes something

special to make it memorable. When I heard it in February played by Hélène Grimaud with The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, led by conductor Xian Zhang it was pleasant and very well played. Grimaud and Zhang are young and their interpretation reflected the energy of the young. Goode and Davis are older and have had more time to think about it. As in his celebrated CD set of the Beethoven piano sonatas every phrase Goode plays in the solos is an essay that demands your complete attention and is like a standalone work on its own. The tempo changed in each solo depending on what Goode wanted to communicate. Davis clearly was in tune with Goode’s conception and the result left the audience deeply involved with the music.

My vision of Ralph Vaughan Williams is of a perpetually old and kindly country gentleman. Listening to his Symphony No. 4 for the first time I realized he can have a knurly and angry aspect as well. The work is modern and complex and fit in very nicely with the Beethoven that made up the rest of the evening. Sir Colin is a regular visitor to New York, most years with at least a week with the New York Philharmonic and three programs with the LSO. Over the years he has introduced us to a lot of British music we may have otherwise missed, I glad he introduced us to Vaughan Williams 4^th, it rounded out an intelligent evening.

The Red Shoes

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes is the kind of legendary film it pays to watch once in a while to remember that sometimes legends are not empty but contain some things that are quite real. It seems to me that the story of a young composer and aspiring ballet dancer still has considerable life to it while Anton Walbrook’s portrayal of the maniacal producer of the ballet company, at once an artistic hero and a destroyer of lives to suit his own purposes is breathtaking.

Despite the use of a Hans Christian Anderson story as the basis of the film superficially, The Rite of Spring is the more important inspiration. Anton Wallbrook is clearly a intended to remind us of Diagliev with his combination of artistic excellence and Barnum like promotion. The young composer reminds us a young Stravinsky, pre Firebird at least and the relationship between impresario and composer is compatible to that between Diagliev and Stravinsky. Even more is the basis of each story – the idea of a girl dancing to her death. A good part of the film is concerned with the idea of genius and the suffering that great art requires.

The idea of suffering for you art is so strong that people get terribly upset if you point out that many people suffer and many artists don’t particularly suffer more than anyone else. If any group of artists suffer for their art its ballet dancers. Any number of books by prima ballerinas describes the bleeding feet, starvation diets and almost mandatory drug use. The Red Shoes it shows the long hours of arduous practice but also meddling in private lives where marriage and even dating are not allowed. This is the main idea in The Red shoes, a ballerina must choose between her art and the composer she loves. It’s a hackneyed idea and wouldn’t make for much of a film if it wasn’t for the beauty of the film, not only the incredible red-headed beauty of Moira Shearer but also of the production as a whole, and by its connection to the legends of Diagliev, Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring.

Person Michael Powell

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