Can You Imagine What This Crisis Would Be Like If We -- Or At Least Lots Of Us -- Didn't Have Access To Today's Onilne Resources?

Plus: Since the world needs music, I'm tacking
a bit on at the end of this post. Here's a tease:





Nobody could be more surprised than your humble author to find himself a practicing Zoomer.

-by Ken

I imagine that Howie and Noah have covered this by now. Nevertheless, let me note for the record how inexpressibly grateful I am, first, for the unbelievably vast range of resources for information and occupation now available online to those of us with decent online access, which is the other thing I want to express inexpressible gratitude for: that I do have such access. I have no idea how many people don't have such access; I just have this terrible feeling that there are a scary-awful lot of them. I try to imagine sometimes what this crisis, dreadful as it is, would be like without that access. It scares and horrifies me.

That said, count me astounded at the quantity and range of stuff being made available for me to read, watch, and do -- going beyond the expanded information and content universe the Intertubes have, in just a few decades, made us take for granted, to a new world of information, instruction, and entertainment which, at least for most of us, didn't exist even a few years ago.

While I don't think of myself as a Luddite or technophobe, I'm far from what you'd call can't-get-enough-new-technology type. I'm a confident e-mailer (hey, it's just writing and reading; I can do those!), but the whole social-media thing fills me with something bordering on dread and horror. I consort with Facebook only 'cause there's stuff and folks there I really do want to keep up on, and I shudder at the thought of going onto Twitter -- the only tweets I see are those for which I've been sent links by a trusted soul.

You can imagine, then, that I would never have imagined myself as even a candidate for Zooomerdom. When, from one week to the next, the leader of my clutter-fighting Meetup group Neatniks (or, more formally, "Hoarders No More"), took us virtual, I approached the first session, not really knowing WTF this Zoom thing is exactly, with intense unease. I got through it in a daze, but was grateful for the trian run when, in short order, my WW workshops also went virtual. By now they've both become fixtures of my life, and I've begun Zooming into a wider world. Just this afternoon, after doing another WW workshop (my third this week, with three different coaches, who've all figured importantly in what I've accomplished), I "attended" a slide-illustrated talk by the associate curator of the New York Transit Museum (one of my favorite places in NYC) on the history of transit signage in the city.


WHEN THE CORONAVIRUS BEGAN ITS LOCAL ROLLOUT --

Notices began to trickle into my e-mailbox, as I expect they did yours, from organizations and businesses I've had dealings with announcing at first the postponement of events or cutback in services, then increasingly cancellations and on-site physical closures. When the trickle started flowing faster, I had the presence of mind to create a folder into which I could dump the ones I'd read and wanted available for future reference and also lots of others I didn't take precious time to read but thought I might later want to.

At first the e-mails were basically informational announcements. Almost from the start, though, the announcements were including stuff to read or watch, and links -- lots and lots, and soon more and more links to a mind-boggling range of stuff to read and watch. It wasn't long before the onetime trickle had swollen to a flood, and my bluntly named "coronavirus" folder was overflowing to the point where it will now require a project in itself to distribute the contents into separate folders by category (which I'm still working out in my head), in order to have any chance to have some control over this material, and to retrieve any of it.


IMPORTANT AS THE MEETINGS ARE . . .

. . . for their stated purposes, they're godsends for the social contact they make a possible, at a time when social contact is the very thing we can't have. Granted, virtual meetups aren't the same as the real thing. Still, It's been wonderful to (literally) be able to see all those familiar faces at my Neatniks and WW gatherings -- and to meet up with new folks too.


AND ALL OVER THE COUNTRY TERRIFIC
PEOPLE ARE GOING ONLINE TO SURVIVE

I can't claim to have more than scratched the surface of what's out there. Early on I remember logging on to an entertaining audienceless performance in a series offered free, with the hope that we'll be moved to cough up some bucks, by Caveat, the politically charged comedy club housed (when it's offering actual performances, I mean) in a basement on the Lower East Side. Now, I can't keep up. For example, Brooklyn Brainery, where I've done a slew if interesting, offbeat, modestly priced classes in recent years, has virtualized its upcoming class schedule, and looking at the list the other day I spotted a class I'd have signed up for on the spot -- if it wasn't already full!

You say you've never heard of Caveat and Brooklyn Brainery? They're among the countless invaluably enterprising organizations which are now struggling to stay viable, and the thing is, anyone anywhere with online access can now participate in what they're doing. Ditto with all the museums and cultural organizations and . . . and, well, everybody.

All these orgs, large and small, are hungry for virtual audiences, and of course support. Brooklyn Brainery's Jen Messier, for example, put up this blogpost on March 15:

We Need Your Help!

The COVID-19 wildness has come at us all in NYC fast and furious over the past week or so. Like lots of other tiny businesses here, we have really small margins and depend on a packed schedule to cover expenses. Because we also have two storefronts, we have a lot of fixed costs, and this past week has been nothing short of devastating. My ultimate goal is to have nothing change once we all bounce past this phase - hell, to have even more classes to help our teachers make up any losses - but right now we're faced with a difficult situation where revenue has dried up almost entirely while expenses remain nearly the same. We'll of course be applying for the city's small business aid when available as well!

If you're able to and would like to help us during this financially tough stretch, we have a few options. Thank you so much!

1) Purchase a gift certificate to be used on a future in-person class: https://brooklynbrainery.com/gift-certificates

2) Try out an online class (more being added each day as we navigate this new world): https://brooklynbrainery.com/courses - just look for "online class" next to the class name

3) Sign up for a class further into the future: https://brooklynbrainery.com/courses

4) Join us as a virtual member to provide critical revenue for our fixed expenses at this time: https://brooklynbrainery.com/c…/virtual-supporter-membership

5) Grab a Brainery tote bag online (this is all we have to sell you!)

6) Share these options with friends!

There's really no good reason for me to be sharing this story rather than the thousands of others. It just happens to be something I'm looking at right now.

There's so much good work being done out there, and so much of it hanging by a thread. And of course this is happening everywhere. I feel horrible that I can't afford to help much, but for all of us this is a unique chance to get acquainted with stuff happening all over the country -- my guess is that any time you Web-surf you'll stumble across a zillion such opportunities, people and organizations who have gone virtual to survive, and are offering us all these riches.


BONUS: WE EXPERIMENT WITH TACKING ON
A BIT OF MUSIC, JUST FOR PLEASURE

I don't want to burden DWT readers, as I often felt I was doing with the old Sunday Classics posts, with the kind of music I love. But lately, as I've been writing a little, I've also had cherished pieces of music lodge in my head which I thought might be pleasant to pass along. And I thought maybe I'd tack one on every time I write a post.

One such is the overture to Leonard Bernstein's deeply delightful, verging-on-opera 1956 Broadway musical Candide. As I've mentioned in the past, this is one of those pieces which can seize hold of me to the point of listening endlessly -- 5 times, or 10, maybe 15. Just now, at a time when I think most of us could sure use an infusion of joie de vivre in our lives, I can't imagine a more sheerly joyous four, or four and a half, minutes' worth.

BERNSTEIN: Overture to Candide


Original Broadway Cast recording, Samuel Krachmalnick, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded Dec. 9. 1956

New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded 1960-63

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded July 1982

London Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded December 1989

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Decca, recorded Feb. 3-4, 1996

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Davis, cond. EMI, recorded live at Glyndebourne, Apr. 27, 1997

In the event that the Candide Overture has the effect on you that it so often does on me, you can of course listen to it now as often as you like, and you don't even have to listen to it the same way, at least not the first six times. We hear, in chronological order (and also, you'll note, in order of fastest to slowest):

• First, the boisterous performance (of which we sampled the final minute at the top of the post) from the Original Broadway Cast recording conducted by that crackerjack theater conductor Samuel Krachmalnick.

• Then three performances, steadily more gradual, by the composer -- with orchestras in New York, within memory of the original Broadway production; Los Angeles, two decades later, and noticeably broader; and, finally, a bit slower still, London, from the studio recording made at the time of Lenny's famous London concert performance of Candide (available on video).

• A suitably sparkling performance from Baltimore conducted by one of the more satisfying (and versatile) conductors of recent times, David Zinman.

• And a wholly international performance, recorded live, with another English orchestra but this time an English conductor, and a fine one, (not-yet-Sir) Andrew Davis (now music director of Lyric Opera of Chicago), who provides a rousing kickoff for a gala concert staged in the theater at Glyndebourne celebrating the centenary of EMI.

Sunday Classics preview: Every day is a good day for an auto-da-fé

In the course of his travels, Candide finds himself in Lisbon just in time for both an earthquake and an auto-da-fé, the "act of faith" that was the Inquisitorial Church's patented mode of festivity built around the burning of heretics. Composer Leonard Bernstein conducts the London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra in this famous July 1982 concert performance of Candide, with Clive Bayley (Bear-Keeper), Neil Jenkins (Cosmetic Merchant), Lindsay Benson (Doctor), Richard Suart (Junkman), John Treleaven (Alchemist), Adolph Green (Dr. Pangloss), and Jerry Hadley (Candide). We're going to hear the start of a less jolly theatrical auto-da-fé.

by Ken

Lately we've heard some orchestral introductions that not only set the scenes for the memorable operatic scenes they introduce, but grab the listener's imagination unforgettably. For example, in February 24's "In Boris Godunov, the Russian people do just as they're told" we heard the introductions to the two scenes of the Prologue to Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (heard here in Rimsky-Korsakov's edition).

MUSSORGSKY: Boris Godunov (ed. Rimsky-Korsakov):
Prelude

Opening of the Coronation Scene

Alexei Maslennikov (t), Prince Shuisky; Sofia Radio Chorus, Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, recorded November 1970

Here are three equally vivid and equally contrasting musical introductions, to consecutive events:
[1]

[2]

[3]

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1965-66


No. [2] AT LEAST SHOULD SOUND FAMILIAR

Read more »

Sunday Classics: Encores, part 1 -- Three legendary pianists

It makes a nifty encore too! Leonard Bernstein conducts his Overture to Candide, kicking off this December 1989 concert performance of the complete musical with the London Symphony Orchestra.

by Ken

As you may have guessed from Friday's preview ("Encore, encore!"), when we heard the great cellist János Starker play three prime encore pieces -- all, as it happened, arranged for cello and piano from other instrumental configurations. I didn't have a very clear idea Friday where exactly this post was headed, except that it would be all encores.

Okay, we're stretching a little with the above video clip, in which Leonard Bernstein conducts his Candide Overture at the start of a concert performance of the piece. But for easily understandable reasons, countless conductors -- including Lenny himself, as memory serves -- used the Candide Overture as a peerlessly rousing encore.

The thing about encores is that they often represent the artist at his/her most personal, whether they're designed to rouse, seduce, charm, or just plain ravish. It's such a large subject, however, that after initially deciding that we would deal only with instrumental encores, leaving the vast subject of vocal ones for another time, I decided to narrow it down even further, to piano encores, at least once we get to the click-through, where we're going to hear sets of encores from three of the 20th's century's greatest pianists-- two of them actual sets of encores from actual concerts, the third a selection of favorite encores of his made by the artist to fill out an LP side.

Before we go there, though, I though we might hear another encore-suitable piece, an arrangement of a traditional Catalan carol for cello and orchestra, which aims to stir listeners in a very different way.

CASALS (arr.): El Cant dels ocells (The Song of the Birds)


Prades Festival Orchestra, Pablo Casals, cello and cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded 1950


TO HEAR TODAY'S SELECTION OF ENCORES FROM
OUR THREE LEGENDARY PIANISTS, CLICK HERE

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The mystery conductor is . . . composer Aaron Copland -- plus the promised further musing on Candide

Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland in 1945

by Ken

Yes, the conductor of our mystery performance of Leonard Bernstein's Candide Overture is the composer's longtime friend and mentor, the distinguished American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990).

Now unless you happen to be familiar with the recording, I don't suppose there was really any way of guessing it. One hint was that it's not a relatively recent recording, and no, it's not. It's from a 1973 Prague concert of mostly American music (in addition to Candide, Copland's own Inscape and Billy the Kid, Ives's Unanswered Question, William Schuman's New England Triptych -- plus Half-Time by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu, who had taught alongside Copland at Tanglewood in the '40s), with the fine Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. I don't know what other forms this concert may have been released in, but what I found is a CD called "An American in Prague," issued in the U.K. in 1993 on the Romantic Robot label.

Of course we're more used to hearing Bernstein conduct Copland. Wouldn't it be fair to say that, with the possible exception of the composer himself, Bernstein was the most effective conductor of Copland's music? Certainly the most influential, since most of the composer's own recordings of his music were made after his reputation, and the music's, were established.

Because of the close connection between the two men, there's purely sentimental value in this unusual instance of "Copland Conducting Bernstein," but I really think the performance is special in its particular way. Another official hint was that the orchestra doesn't seem to know the piece well, which might have suggested a non-American one. As I suggested, though, there's something special about hearing the Czech Phil be drawn by the conductor into the spirit of the piece.

Also, as I mentioned, I've never heard anyone bring this unaffected sweetness to the Overture's first real tune, which in the show itself is the duet "Oh, Happy We" between our impossibly innocent hero, Candide, and the object of his wild and apparently mutual infatuation, Cunegonde. The music tells us that they are as one in their shared rapture. However, the words (by the principal original lyricist, the poet Richard Wilbur) tell us that, like so many couples in the throes of infatuation, although in perhaps slightly extreme form, neither young lover is hearing the beloved one's heart's desires with absolute clarity:

CANDIDE: Soon, when we feel we can afford it,
We'll build a modest little farm.
CUNEGONDE: We'll buy a yacht and live aboard it,
Rolling in luxury and stylish charm.
CANDIDE: Cows and chickens. CUNEGONDE: Social whirls.
CANDIDE: Peas and cabbage. CUNEGONDE: Ropes of pearls.



(The Candide here is tenor Paul Groves, and the Cunegonde, soprano Kristen Chenoweth. This is from a 2005 series of staged concert performances with the New York Philharmonic under Marin Alsop, also available on DVD.)

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A musical puzzle: Can you guess who conducts our mystery recording of the Overture to Candide?

Leonard Bernstein conducts the London Symphony Orchestra
in his Candide Overture at London's Barbican Centre.

"Once one dismisses
The rest of all possible worlds,
One finds that this is
The best of all possible worlds."

-- Dr. Pangloss and his pupils ("Lesson 11, paragraph 2, axiom 7"), from Act I of Leonard Bernstein's Candide (these lyrics by John LaTouche)

by Ken

I'm not sure there's any 4 1/2 minutes' worth of music I treasure more than the Overture to Candide. I don't know if you're given to musical monomania -- by which I mean listening to a piece of music over and over (and over) -- but I am, and there's hardly any piece more likely to set me to trying to figure out how the "repeat 1" mode of the particular CD player I'm using works, or (usually) just manually replaying the track, over and over (and over). I've been known to listen to it half a dozen, or even a dozen times. More often than I dare count.

Now, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) did an awful lot of things in his long career, as composer, conductor, and educator-explicator (we should probably include as pianist as well) -- way too much for us to even begin to reckon with here. Let me just venture that if he'd left behind nothing but these 4 1/2 minutes of music, with its unsurpassable celebration of the joys of the here and now, he would be immortal. (Even if you think you've never heard the piece, I bet you'll recognize the romp, the final section of Cunegonde's astonishing "aria" "Glitter and be gay," that cuts loose at 3:23 of the Bernstein-LSO recording, or 3:36 of our mystery version -- see below.)

Let's try not to get bogged down in the history of this musical rendering of Voltaire's gloriously satiric novella, which tells the story of the supremely naive hero, Candide, who carries the inspirational philosophy of his tutor, the philosopher Dr. Pangloss -- that this is "the best of all possible worlds" -- into a world that dishes out a steady diet of disaster mixed with catastrophe. The show's history is a nightmare, though it all started off innocently enough when the playwright Lillian Hellman and Lenny B tossed around the idea of making a musical of Candide. The poet Richard Wilbur was enlisted to contribute lyrics, and many other hands chipped in. Already by the time it reached the Broadway stage in 1956 this poor "comic operetta" had a complicated history.

The poor thing was pretty much a flop, with hardly anybody knowing quite what to make of it. It lasted only two months, 73 performances. Whereupon Lenny, with heavy heart, turned his attention to another long-simmering theater project, a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet originally proposed by the choreographer-director Jerome Robbins. It was being developed with playwright Arthur Laurents and a fledgling lyricist named Stephen Sondheim, and reached Broadway in 1957. For all its formal originality (youth gangs depicted in stylized dance?), nobody had any difficulty knowing what to make of West Side Story.

Candide wouldn't die, though. Over the years productions popped up all over the place, and seemingly each created a new "edition" of its own. Increasingly, at least some of the creators were dragged into the process. I doubt that it would be possible to count the number of versions that were concocted, with varying degrees of official sanction.

The composer got into the act, and by the time of his live concert performances and studio recording in December 1989, he had given his official blessing to what someone (an individual with a deadpan sense of humor?) thought to call "The Final Revised Version." Ha! Even Lenny's death the following year didn't slow the pace of the creation of new, further "improved" performing versions.

Getting Candide into some kind of final form was one of the composer's last creative projects. And judging by the video recording of the second of two concert performances he conducted in London, on Dec. 12 and 13, 1989, with a starry cast and the London Symphony Orchestra (at the same time, Lenny's recording company of his last couple of decades, Deutsche Grammophon, made a studio audio recording with these same forces), he had a chance to see this most troubled of his creations achieve riotous public acclaim. On the evidence of the video recording (available on DVD), it was a joyous event for all concerned. Certainly the composer seems to be having the time of his life. I don't think you would guess that he was dying. (It seems to have been mostly lung problems, which continued to worsen, until the end came with an assist from pneumonia on Oct. 14, 1990.)

While everything in the perennially crowd-pleasing Candide Overture comes from the show, the Overture has taken on a life of its own, a concert staple at pops concerts and not-so-pops concerts. There have been lots of recordings, including some pretty good ones, and including at least two by the composer before the complete recording of Candide in 1989.

And then there's this performance, not quite like any other I've heard, which I stumbled across recently in the $3.99 bin of my CD emporium. The question I'm putting to you is whether anyone can guess whose recording this is. (From the fact that I only "recently" stumbled across it in the $3.99 bin, you may guess correctly that it's not exactly brand-new. There, that's a hint.)


[One technical note: Be prepared to really crank up the volume. Perhaps because the performance was squeezed onto a CD that contains more than 80 minutes' worth of music, it's mastered at a quite low level. Hmm, could there be a hint there too? Perhaps not, unless you happen to know the recording in question.]

I don't say this is the definitive recording, or my favorite. This orchestra, unlike the London Symphony, which shouted the piece out with such swagger for Lenny in 1989, clearly doesn't have the piece in its bones. (Aha, another hint!) Yet there's something touching about hearing the players getting into the spirit of the thing.

I suspect, though, that the less rambunctious, more nuanced approach is in good part the conductor's choice. For one thing, at 4:51 this is the longest performance of the piece I've heard.

The composer's history with the piece is interesting. His 1960 recording with the New York Philharmonic ran 4:09, a mere second longer than Samuel Krachmalnick's snappy performance in the Original Broadway Cast recording (still indispensable, if only for the electrifying performance of the young Barbara Cook as Cunegonde). This broadened to 4:18 when he recorded it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1982, then to 4:30 by the time of the 1989 LSO recording.

This reminds us how tricky it can be to try to realize "the composer's intention." What was this composer's intention? The 1960 version, the 1982, or the 1989? My feeling is that Lenny was only one of many conductors who came to realize that there was more depth in his little gem of an overture than anyone, even the composer, was hearing in the early days of those four-minute performances. With a little more breathing room, this little treasure opens up.

Now here's our mystery conductor stretching all the way to 4:51! In addition, there's some treasurable textural detail, and also an innocent sweetness and delicacy I've never head anyone else coax from what we might call the "main theme," the lyrical central section (at 1:28 in this performance) taken from the Candide-Cunegonde duet "Oh, Happy We." (We'll be talking about that duet more when we reveal the answer to our musical mystery.) This could be a hint too.

One final hint: Part of what makes the mystery performance special to me is the identify of the conductor. And one suggestion: What I would probably do is listen to it, oh, 19 or 20 times. No, this probably wouldn't help me identify the performance. It's just probably what I would do.

[Note: The answer tomorrow, along with the promised further musings on Candide -- with still-further musings to follow, probably the week after next.]

UPDATE -- THE MYSTERY SOLVED!

You'll find the answer here.

LB'S EARLIER RECORDINGS OF THE CANDIDE OVERTURE

Both the 1960 N.Y. Phil and the 1982 L.A. Phil versions are readily available, and the CD editions I'm familiar with I can recommend unhesitatingly. They're both filled with terrific performances of terrific music, beautifully recorded and mastered, and relatively cheap.

The earlier recording appears in a generous (78:27!) Sony Masterworks CD gathering LB's 1960-63 N.Y. Phil accounts of his theater-based music: the indispensable Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" (which, at least to these old ears, sound as grippingly fresh as ever after 50 years), the Symphonic Suite arranged from his score for the Elia Kazan film On the Waterfront, the Fancy Free ballet, and the Three Dance Episodes from "On the Town," his first Broadway musical.

The L.A. Phil version appears on a lovely DG CD that also includes the maestro's early-'80s remake of the West Side Story and On the Town music, filled out with some other choice American music: Samuel Barber's haunting Adagio (aka that music from Platoon) and a piece he all but owned, George Gershwin's eternally vital, throbbing Rhapsody in Blue, in which, naturally, he also plays the solo piano part. He'd been playing the solo-piano version of the Rhapsody essentially all his life.

The LB of 1980 was a very different conductor from the LB of 1960. His performances of most music, emphatically including his own, tended to become more spacious and reflective. That got him into trouble at times, but happily there's no loss of high-voltage excitement in the performances gathered on this DG CD. I don't plan to do without either version.

For that matter, I would hate to be without LB's 1958 Rhapsody in Blue. The LP on which it originally appeared, coupled with his equally joyful and rousing 1959 recording of Gershwin's infectious An American in Paris, has always struck me as one of his happiest records. Now they appear on a Sony Masterworks CD along with Ferde Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite, one of the first classical pieces I fell in love with, and one I still adore. (By the way, if you're familiar with the American composer John Corigliano, you may know that his father was a longtime concertmaster of the New York Philarmonic. In that capacity, John Corigliano Sr. played the important violin solos in this 1963 recording of the Grand Canyon Suite.)

Note that at the time I searched out the CD links, Amazon was selling the Sony Bernstein CD for $7.99, the Sony Gershwin CD for $10.99, and the DG disc for $11.99. Buy all three for $31, and you're over the $25 minimum for free shipping.

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And in "gay"-free OneNewsNow World (see the post below), Cunegonde's aria from Lenny Bernstein's "Candide" would be "Glitter and be homosexual"?

This is Kristen Chenoweth, and boy, if she had done it with a serious director who wanted to play it for real rather than for cheap comedy, could she have made something of this glorious piece!

It would be a lot funnier too. What's funny about the piece is that Cunegonde wants so badly to believe that she is a sensitive, tragic sufferer, and that the vapid pleasure-loving slut is just "a role I play," but since the truth is more nearly the reverse, she just can't keep the other stuff from slipping out.

Still, our Kristen sings the dickens out of the thing.

Note to those who dread ingesting even a particle of culture: Once you get through the slow section and then the faster section to the really fast section, I guarantee you you'll recognize it. You'll say, "Oh, that's Candide?"

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