2020 in Review
For all the miserable shit that went down in 2020, it really wasn’t all that bad a year, at least for those who lost no relatives or livelihoods to COVID – if one applies the retrospect available to me here on Jan. 18, 2021, that is. I don’t think it’s cheating to say 2020 will not be officially over until a new administration takes over in eight days. So the 2020 calendar gets a little added on, not unlike trump’s Sharpee’d hurricane map.
The main highlight was the November election, which officially concluded two weeks ago. The sleazy, moronic con-man lost the election, and then last week, by inciting a deadly riot, guaranteed he’ll never hold any political office unless, maybe, as governor of a third-world southern state like florida or alabama.
The November election also showed Georgia to be a Democratic majority state when it failed to go for trump, and then again after the resultant Senate run-offs January 5. The fact that a black minister from Martin Luther King’s old church and a 33-something Jewish Bernie-acolyte will represent Georgia in the Senate is a delayed-effect 2020 highlight of staggering magnitude. And what’s more, Georgia showed that Democrats – or at least Stacy Abrahms – can go the full ten rounds with the Republican ogre and win a TKO.
And while COVID has added a layer of misery (to whatever extent) to an already grim time, even it had its upside. For starters, it was the probably the only thing that kept trump from getting reelected. And I think it also played a vital role in the racial justice movement, as well as in the rise of a pragmatic wing in the Democratic party. And COVID presented a challenge to medical science that produced seemingly miraculous results: effective vaccines had been developed by year’s end.
But COVID owned the year. It’s what everyone will think of whenever anyone says “2020” for the rest of time. COVID made 2020 a year most people outside the upper 10% income bracket would like to forget.
COVID’s effects were devastating for the performing arts and for the people whose lives revolve around them. And I include audiences in that group – the Asheville Chamber Music Series had a great ’20-’21season lined up that went *poof* and I am still pissed. I feel deep empathy for musicians in all genres whose livelihoods revolve in large part on touring and live performances. The NY Times posted the following heart-rending story back on April 19, 2020 (what seems like five years ago), about a vigorous young ensemble that has made two appearances in Asheville that I’ve been lucky enough to see, the Tesla Quartet.
I hope their story, and all touring musicians’ stories, resolves in a happy ending in 2021. Musicians are inherently resilient because they have to be, and audiences for live music quite simply need live music to function properly. As one of the commenters to the NYT article above noted, the people who have real money in this country – the people who could keep the fine arts afloat without a noticeable dent to their bank accounts – simply do not care about the arts. Of course, they do not care about anything, including the future that their offspring will face. The 600+ billionaires in the U.S. right now make the robber barons of the Gilded Age look like St. Francis of Assisi.
One reason I spend my time listening to classical music is to affect a retreat from the bleak-ass world we live in, and in that remote place, at least, I found plenty to like in 2020. Here is a list of five highlights:
1. THE MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA
I was extremely lucky to see two concerts before the shutdown. My good fortune in this respect is not lost on me. If these concerts had been scheduled the following week, they would have been canceled for COVID.
In late 2019, I booked a trip to check out the Twin Cities as a possible relocation site, and lined it up with a couple Minnesota Orchestra performances whose programs seemed almost too good to be true. One had Shostakovich’s rarely-programmed (it transpires in near utter darkness) second violin concerto played by one of today’s great soloists, Christian Tetzlaff, and the second featured an all-Russian program with pieces by Gubaidulina (!) and Ustvolskaya (!!!!). I wrote about the concerts in a blog post. All I will say here is that hearing a world-class orchestra and a highest-echelon soloist in the case of Tetzlaff performing music by geniuses is an incredible experience.
(The postscript to the Minnesota trip, of course, is that a month later a Minneapolis pig murdered George Floyd in chilling fashion, the city (and nation) erupted in outrage, and any thoughts of moving to Minnesota went *poof*.)
But those two shows were it, and so subsequent highlights came from…
2. INTERNET
I’m sorry to admit I didn’t watch many live-streamed concerts even though those were the best way to help out the artists and composers. There were two types of live-streamed concerts, but I had trouble getting into either.
First came the at-home shows – mostly solo performances and a few Zoomed ensemble pieces, like those shows gamely staged by the American Composers Orchestra and the Bang on a Can All-Stars, both of which featured top-notch artists performing a lot of new music from living composers. Often, such shows included interviews with the principals. These are shows where your conscience begs you to contribute on behalf of the artists, which creates a sense of guilt among those living well below the poverty line, such as myself. The Asheville Chamber Music Series is one institution streaming its ’20/’21 season for a suggested donation. I do intend to pay for their stream of the Neaves Trio on Friday, April 23, when they will perform three piano trios by women composers, including Rebecca Clarke’s, which is third only to Tchaikovsky’s and Shostakovich’s on my all-time list.
Then, with the coming of autumn, orchestras began live streaming socially-distanced shows from their regular venues. Neither, of course, had live audiences aside from the people manning the cameras. It’s weird – I curse live audiences when a cougher or restless-legger mars an audio recording of a live performance, but, live, the absence of an audience was off-putting. The same thing happened with college football games and NBA playoffs (baseball, oddly, seemed to suffer least…) The appeal of live events is, in large part, the shared experience. Shared with others in the audience, of course, but also the thrill (to whatever extent) of sharing live space with supremely talented people. Artists and geniuses. Do you know what I mean? I hope so, but at least I know what I mean.
I did manage to mitigate the ulcer in my soul resulting from no live music by watching concerts filmed in the pre-COVID times. The Berlin Philharmonic generously made its on-line concert archive available free of charge for a couple months, early in the shutdown. Their concerts, especially those of the Simon Rattle years, are incredibly well-filmed. Close-ups on hands and instruments, precision choreographed so that the camera is in the right place in anticipation of the moment when, say, the timpanist does a light roll to create a sense of doom, overhead shots of whichever section of the orchestra is in play at that particular moment. Well-filmed shows, along with marijuana gumdrops, are, I’m inclined to think, almost as good as seeing it live. If I had any income to speak of, I would subscribe to the Berlin Philharmonic’s digital concert hall. It’s not cheap – a year’s subscription is €149, or roughly $180 – but it is nevertheless a bargain. There are also less-costly options for the poor and/or classical curious. A 7-day pass is €9.90 ($12) and a 30-day pass is €19.90 ($24). ) A year subscription includes around 40 live-streamed concerts plus access to hundreds of the archived shows, and while the library is well-stocked with the old faithfuls, there is a TON of stuff for fans of the modern-era music For example, there is in the BPO archive is a piece by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, four by Wolfgang Rihm, five from Hans Werner Henze, a dozen performances @ of works by Ligeti and Lutoslawski, and a whopping 35 of Shostakovich (– one more than Bach!) If you want to check it out for a week, I’d recommend as a starting point a 2002 concert, Simon Rattle’s debut as BPO music director, that pairs Thomas Ades’s 1997 Asyla with Mahler’s 5th symphony.
Utmost respect for Rattle…
Other great sites with lots of filmed concerts available are those operated by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, and London’s Wigmore Hall, most of whom also upload to Youtube. And of course Youtube has a treasure trove of filmed concerts of many vintages, both historical and recent. Lots of orchestras and chamber groups maintain Youtube playlists. My favorite Youtube clip(s) from the year was not a concert, but a recording session. The Avie label filmed Inbal Segev playing Anna Clyne’s concerto for cello, Dance. The reason I wrote clips plural was because each of the five movements is a separate clip. It is a beautifully-filmed rendition of the most beautiful piece of contemporary music I’ve encountered. Segev, conductor Marin Alsop, and all of the musicians of the London Symphony are in regular clothes – mostly t-shirts and jeans – which somehow, for me at least, ups the transcendence quotient. More about Anna Clyne below, but first, on to…
3. GEORGIA
Not the state this time, the country. And it is the country of Georgia, by the way, not the republic… Georgia was a republic when it was part of the USSR, but now it’s a dinky country on the east side of the Black Sea, recently in the news for a skirmish with its eastern neighbor, the former Soviet republic and now country of Armenia. Politically, I do not know anything about the time Georgia spent as a Soviet republic, aside from the unfortunate fact that “Stalin” (real name Ioseb Besarionis dzе Jughashvili) came from there. But I do know that, in terms of music at least, Georgia benefited tremendously by the Soviet system. The Tbilisi Conservatory, established in 1917, nurtured and then employed a group of composers of uncommon abilities who constituted the most intriguing rabbit hole I went down in 2020. I devoted a month’s worth of episodes to Georgia on my radio show, and I also fashioned this talk-free mixtape:
The combination of Georgian folk music (which is ancient, beautiful and very odd) and the influence of post-Stalin Shostakovich produced lots and lots of amazing music. Giya Kancheli is well known in the West, and Sulkhan Tsintsadze somewhat, but Sulkhan Nasidze, Otar Taktakishvili, Nodar Gabunia and Iosep Nadareishvili are all composers I would consider “major” in terms of bodies of interesting work, are – none of them – mentioned in any of my reference books. I should note that Georgia has its own alphabet and that all of those spellings are phonetic and so most have Roman alphabet variations that can be mildly confusing in searching for music.
4. ANNA CLYNE
There are a number of composers working today who are in their primes and who, I think, could “save” classical music from itself, at least to a great extent, if they are given the chance. By “save” I mean write music for orchestras and ensembles that engages younger (in this context, people in their thirties and forties) discerning listeners. These composers write music that is complex and surprising without being deliberately off-putting. (I have absolutely nothing against music that is deliberately unpleasant so long as there is something interesting about it, but I am also realistic – not too many people share my fondness for brutal gnashing.) I’m talking about melodies that hook, melodies that last. I’m talking about putting asses in seats. (Post-COVID, of course…) Of these composers to whom I allude, many, if not most, are women: I would include Dobrinka Tabakova, Gabriela Lena Frank, Caroline Shaw, Missy Mazzoli, and Lera Auerbach in this group. Anna Clyne would be at the top of the list, irrespective of gender. Thomas Ades is the first dude who comes to mind.
It does seem very weird to me that I had not heard of Clyne until 2020’s release of Lisa Stepanova’s fine E Pluribus Unum album, a disc showcasing piano pieces by American composers born in foreign countries (Anna Clyne is British but has resided here for many of her 40 years…), done in response to trump’s immigration policies. Clyne has been composing for major ensembles and artists – ones I pay attention to, like the Chicago Symphony, Jennifer Koh and the Bang-on-a-Can All-Stars – for the last dozen or so years, but I had somehow never heard her. I am pretty convinced that life is an illusion and Clyne’s sudden and very timely appearance in my life would seem to back that up. Digging a little deeper – which is to say watching some Youtube interviews and reading everything I can find – lends credence to an idea I had upon first listen to the cello concerto she wrote for Inbal Segev: Clyne is a composer with greatness about her.
She has a website where one can find out almost all one needs to know and where one can listen in Soundcloud fashion to almost all of the works she’s had performed by top-notch artists or had recorded.
5. Alice’s Piano by Melissa Muller and Reinhard Piechocki
St.Martin’s Press (2006)
I got this book off the FREE cart at the downtown library last winter when it was still open. This is a biography (third person) of Alice Herz-Sommer, who was born into the Jewish intelligentsia of Prague – her sister was pals with Franz Kafka – in 1903. She became a concert pianist, packing them in, whose approach to Chopin was a revelation. She was married with a son when the Nazis took Prague and sent her family to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto, which was initially the Nazi’s display camp (they allowed Red Cross investigators in) and later became a way station for Auschwitz when the Final Solution was implemented. She and her son survived; her husband was sent elsewhere and was lost to history.
At a time when my country had at its helm a buffoonish dictator-wannabe chummy with neo-Nazis, this real-time account of Prague’s descent into maelstrom is a powerful primer on what fascism really means. It is also a testament to the power of music. It was her skill as a pianist and teacher that kept her off the death train. She gave frequent concerts for her fellow inmates before the Final Solution and helped with other musical presentations. Her recollections about Hans Krasa when they worked on Krasa’s children’s opera Brundibar at Terezin are especially poignant. Krasa, who might’ve been remembered as one of the great Czech composers, was murdered at Auschwitz, and all but two or three of the all-child cast were sent to their deaths weeks after Red Cross inspectors saw a performance. (Alice’s son Raphael, who became a top-tier cellist in adulthood, was one of those few survivors.) This is the most inspiring book I have ever read. You want to talk about inner strength? No hand-wringing angst anywhere in the 325 pages, and no sunny bromides either. Just the clear-eyed reflection of an intensely positive person. Upon finishing, I was trying to think of someone I could give my copy to who would actually read it, came up with no one, and so gave it to myself. And it was much appreciated because it is one book, along with The Master and Margarita and Abel Sanchez, I will definitely read again if I don’t, y’know, die early. Alice lived to the age of 110 with that positive attitude of hers – you can watch interviews on Youtube – and I’m thinking a reread will be helpful as dotage and terminal illness loom…
and, of course, there were lots of NEW RELEASES
COVID had no immediate effect on the number of fine new releases. In this sense, at least, 2020 was no different than any year before it. I suppose we will see COVID’s effect on the recording industry as 2021 wears on, however. I’m just going to list five that, if I had any money, I would be willing to guarantee you’ll enjoy immensely if you’ve read this far…
* Ildiko Szabo: Heritage (Hungaroton)
This was my favorite record of the year, along with Anna Clyne’s Mythologies (description below…), but then I am partial to cello, to Hungary and to women artists. That’s all going on here. It’s her third release for Hungaroton. She’s 27 and studied with Janos Starker, who was perhaps first but not last to recognize he had a genius on his hands. The program is excellent and off-beat. Kodaly’s solo sonata is the headliner but the other works, by Ligeti, Eotvos, Szabo (her grandfather)
* Anna Clyne: Mythologies (Avie)
BBC Orchestra
Five single-movement pieces for full-size orchestra from one of the few composers her age to have found a place in major concert halls, Anna Clyne. Clyne writes music that is both challenging (to more or lesser degree, depending upon the situation) and immediately catchy on the melodic tip. I am completely hooked on her orchestral writing. I am very fond of her chamber music, too, much of which involves tape and found sound; I mention the orchestral music because I don’t think there are many people alive who can both orchestrate and create immediately memorable music. Well, I don’t know of anyone. Marin Alsop, a frequent champion of Clyne works, conducts two.
* The Very Best of Pawel Lukaszewski (Dux)
Various
In Poland, Lukaszewski is regarded as the heir of Gorecki, Penderecki and Lutoslawski. I had never heard of him until this 2-CD set, but it makes a very good case for that argument. He is best-known for his vocal and choral works, which are represented here, but his writing for chamber ensembles and orchestras is amply represented as well.
* Charles Ives – Complete Symphonies (DG)
Gustavo Dudamel: Los Angeles Philharmonic
Ives is the only American composer inhabiting that loftiest of stratospheric planes, the one where people like Mahler, Stravinsky and Debussy sit. It makes sense, I suppose, that America’s greatest composer was a hyper-individualistic outsider with contempt for the genteel; also, that he was an insurance executive. There were four completed symphonies and this is an excellent way to get them all. The young Venezuelan Dudamel greets the music with the firm handshake Ives requires. Start with the fourth and work backwards if you’re inclined toward the odd…
* Metal Angel (Toccata)
Gunnar Idenstam
Idenstam is a Lapp organist and composer, born in the Swedish north back in 1961. I read a review of this by an old crank who hates almost all new music, but he loved this. I had to check it out, and WHOA. This is the punk rock/classical hybrid I never thought I’d hear. Idenstam has recorded lots of the organ repertoire, and if you’re familiar with Vierne’s and Messiaen’s writing for organ, this might not be totally surprising to you. I can’t relate it to any other music I’ve heard. Imagine a classical Moondog who came of age in the No Wave… maybe?
Don Howland
Asheville, NC
Jan. 18, 2021
Concentration Camp 