Robert Rauschenberg died Monday at the age of 82. He was best known as a visual artist, and within that area he worked in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage art, sculpture, papermaking, photography, and printmaking. But along with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, with whom he was a frequent collaborator early in his career, he was the impetus behind a revolution in the ways of thinking about and creating art of all stripes in the wake of post-war modernism. Like Cage, he reveled in the beauty of the everyday, and famously incorporated mundane found objects in his work. In his New York Times obituary, he is reported as having said, “I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.” In the way that Cage’s work invites us to hear the beauty surrounding us, Rauschenberg’s work invites us to see it.

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One of the nicest things about the Met’s production of Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment is that although it features two of the biggest names in opera, Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez, the show feels like an ensemble piece. The opera is the ideal vehicle for Dessay and Flórez to shine their brightest, but in the HD telecast on April 26, the entire cast, down to chorus and the smallest roles, contributed to the sizzle and the general level of excellence. And best of all, everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives.

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We’re certainly living in the age of crossover, with artists of almost every background venturing outside their own area of expertise to explore and sometimes try to create a common ground between two (or more) disparate musical traditions. This is a sampling of some of the more eccentric combinations that have turned up recently. With no value judgments about the artistic success of the outcomes, we humbly present this assortment of crossover pieces for your perusal.
 
 
1. Italian grand opera + traditional Aboriginal music + lite rock

Aboriginal digeridoo player and producer David Hudson has made a single-track CD-length version of Nessun Dorma, the popular tenor aria from Puccini’s faux-Chinese opera, Turandot, arranged for voice, digeridoo, and soft rock ensemble. With Australia, China and Europe represented, he’s got the northern hemisphere covered and the eastern half of the south — if he’d included a west African djembe, or Peruvian panpipes, he would have had a truly global combination.

David Hudson & Friends - Nessun Dorma:

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Philip Glass’ Satyagraha is nearly thirty years old, and it’s proving to be one of his most durable creations. Metropolitan Opera director Peter Gelb calls it Glass’ greatest opera, a masterpiece, and based on the impact it makes in the Met’s vibrant new production, co-produced with the English National Opera, it’s hard to disagree. Satyagraha is a Sanskrit word meaning “truth force,” or “strength through truth,” which Gandhi coined while living in South Africa between 1893 and 1914, working for equality for the country’s Indian population. The philosophy of non-violent resistance that Gandhi and his followers practiced became the model for many of the most successful liberation movements of the twentieth century. The opera focuses on six pivotal events in Gandhi’s life during that period, preceded by a scene from Hindu mythology. The scenes are not arranged chronologically, and the opera’s Sanskrit text, taken from the Bhagavad Gita by Constance de Jong, consists of philosophical reflections rather than dialogue, so the opera obviously doesn’t conform to conventional narrative structure. Each carefully constructed scene makes sense as a dramatic unit, though, and the effect of the whole is powerful.

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In one of Classical Corner’s ongoing features, we look at young composers who haven’t fully made it onto the radar screen of general audiences, but who’ve got distinctive voices and something important to say — these are composers to watch out for. Since a surprising number were born in 1963 and are turning 45 this year, on the cusp of moving out of the “young” category, this seemed like an appropriate time to acknowledge these composers who deserve more widespread recognition.

Composers born in 1963 are young enough to have come of age musically when modernism, particularly serialism, was still the prevailing aesthetic. In the US and Britain, with post-modernism beginning to gain wider acceptance in academic music in the last decades of the century, minimalism and popular music were broadening the scope of aesthetic possibilities. In continental Europe there were some rumblings of change, but modernism has generally been more tenacious there. The critical issue for composers of this generation has been discovering a resolution of the relationship between modernism and post-modern musical developments, and one of the most fascinating things about this group is hearing the variety of responses individuals have come up with. For some of the composers, their aesthetic solutions to the wealth of options open to them could be pretty wild, so for several of the pieces here, be prepared to hold on to your hats!

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The Metropolitan Opera continued its series of HD simulcasts to movie theaters with a performance of Tristan und Isolde on Saturday. This year’s run of the opera is likely to end up in the annals of performances that are, in the diplomatic words of Met General Manager Peter Gelb, “somewhat star-crossed.” This was to have been (and may yet be) an epoch-making Tristan, starring two of the greatest Wagnerian singers of our time, Deborah Voight and Ben Heppner, conducted by one of the greatest of the composer’s contemporary interpreters, James Levine, in a starkly but beautifully simple production by director Dieter Dorn and designer Jürgen Rose. But it was not to be.

Ben Heppner took ill with a viral infection and had to cancel his appearances, although he may have recovered enough to sing the last two performances later this week. His initial replacement was deemed inadequate and removed after a single performance, and was replaced by Gary Lehman. Then, at the second performance, Deborah Voight became ill in the middle of the second act and had to leave the stage to be replaced by her understudy. In the third performance, because of a malfunction in the stage machinery, Mr. Lehman was thrown into the prompter’s box (!), but fortunately didn’t sustain any serious injuries, and the performance was resumed. (Amazingly, these circumstances pale in comparison with those of the opera’s 1865 premiere: the Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, died of a heart attack soon after the premiere, although he was only 29, and Wagner blamed himself for writing a role so physically and psychologically grueling that it precipitated the singer’s death.)

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March 21 is J.S. Bach’s birthday (his 323rd) and this year it falls on Good Friday. The Scottish-based Dunedin Consort, whose 2006 recording of Messiah is easily one of the strongest and most striking versions on disc, has just released Bach’s Matthew Passion, so this seems a very appropriate moment to draw attention to it. Their Matthew Passion is notable on several accounts. First, it’s the first recording the use the version of the score that Bach prepared for his final performance of the work in Leipzig around 1742. The oratorio is scored for double chorus, double orchestra, and soloists. This version departs from the standard edition in its use of a harpsichord, rather than an organ in the second orchestra, providing an expanded timbral palette, and the addition of a part for viola da gamba in the second orchestra. Conductor John Butt doesn’t claim that this is the authoritative, “correct” version of the score, but it’s one that Bach did create, and therefore deserves to be heard. A second distinction of the recording is Butt’s decision to use one singer on a part, making the choral forces a double quartet, and drawing the principal soloists, including the central roles of the Evangelist and Jesus, from the chorus. The result is wonderfully transparent and intimate, allowing the listener to hear the work in a new way. A third is the superlative quality of the performance. Butt’s reading of the score emphasizes the propulsive nature of the narrative, but is never hurried, allowing its slow moments to be fully expansive. The quality of the soloists/chorus is absolutely first rate, and it’s their contribution that makes this recording so moving and memorable. They sing with youthful freshness, dramatic power, beautifully unforced tone, and complete naturalness. Anyone looking to celebrate Bach’s birthday or to commemorate Good Friday should look into the Dunedin Consort’s outstanding version of one of the composer’s greatest and most deeply devotional works.

Dunedin Consort — Matthew Passion: Kommt ihr Töchter
Dunedin Consort — Matthew Passion: Da Jesus diese Rede vollendet hatte (Nicholas Mulroy & Matthew Brook)
Dunedin Consort — Matthew Passion: Buss und Reu (Claire Wilkinson)
Dunedin Consort — Matthew Passion: Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen
Dunedin Consort — Matthew Passion: Ach, nun ist mein Jesus hin!
Dunedin Consort — Matthew Passion: Am Abend, da es kühle war (Mathew Brook)
Dunedin Consort — Matthew Passion: Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder

There’s no better way to get geared up for a festive celebration of St. Patrick’s Day than to listen to some excellent Irish singing (although I suppose that there are those who would argue that a few pints of Guinness might also be effective). The group Anúna is about as famous as a choral ensemble can get in popular culture. They received a Grammy for their performance with Riverdance, and their single from that show made it to the Top Ten in the UK. They’ve performed with Elvis Costello, Sinéad O’Conner, Sting, and the Chieftains, and they’re one of the finest groups performing contemporary classical choral music. Their main focus has been 800 years of Irish and Celtic music, much of it arranged or composed by their amazingly gifted conductor, Michael McGlynn. These musical examples give a glimpse of their wonderfully warm tone, sensuous vocal blend, and musical versatility and virtuosity.

Anuna 2002
Fionnghuala:
Crist and St. Marie:
Sí Do Mhaimeo Í;

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