Article: Surround Sound Through the Centuries

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Philharmonic 360 This program, conducted by Alan Gilbert of the New York Philharmonic and including the Oratorio Society of New York and others, at the Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory on Friday evening.

Surround Sound Through the Centuries

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/a...lharmonic-360-at-park-avenue-armory.html?_r=1

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Published: July 1, 2012

Those who think classical music needs some shaking up routinely challenge music directors at major orchestras to think outside the box. That is precisely what Alan Gilbert did on Friday night for an exhilarating concert with the New York Philharmonic in the Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory. His program, “Philharmonic 360,” took the orchestra outside the box of Avery Fisher Hall and into the armory’s cavernous hall, a space the size of a football field with a vaulted 80-foot ceiling. The reverberating acoustics there make it problematic for many kinds of music. But not all kinds.

Mr. Gilbert, finishing his third season as the Philharmonic’s music director, seized on the Drill Hall as ideally suited to works conceived with a spatial dimension to the sound, especially Stockhausen’s “Gruppen” (“Groups”) for Three Orchestras. This 25-minute piece, composed in the mid-1950s, is meant to be played by three separately positioned orchestras with an audience in the middle. It is performed rarely because it is hard to adapt traditional concert halls to this scheme.

But the Drill Hall was perfect for “Gruppen.” With this work as the mainstay of the program, Mr. Gilbert chose scores by Pierre Boulez and Charles Ives that also involve spatial elements. And to show that composers in earlier eras sometimes thought spatially, he included the finale to Act I of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” — the party in Giovanni’s ballroom — in which three groups of instruments simultaneously play different dances.

Mr. Gilbert comes across as a modest, serious-minded musician, both in person and on the podium. Yet he is at his most dynamic when he thinks big, as with the white-hot performance he conducted in 2010 of Ligeti’s bleakly satirical opera “Le Grand Macabre,” in an inventive production by the director Doug Fitch at Avery Fisher Hall. “Philharmonic 360,” this season’s special Gilbert project, was comparably ambitious and successful.

The director and designer Michael Counts, who staged New York City Opera’s 2011 “Monodramas” production, helped transform this concert into a theatrical performance with a made-to-order set. In the center of the hall several hundred audience members sat in circular rows, resting against innovative supports called Back Jacks. There were three surrounding platforms for three orchestras, all subgroups of the Philharmonic, with a conductor’s podium in the middle. Between the platforms traditional rising rows of seats had been set up; all together about 1,400 audience members were accommodated. That Friday’s performance (and Saturday’s repeat) was sold out well in advance should reassure the Philharmonic’s board that there is a classical music audience eager for adventures in programming.

Mr. Gilbert began the evening with a piece unlisted in the program: Gabrieli’s Canzon XVI, played by three brass ensembles positioned in far-apart sections of the balcony. The Drill Hall was a perfect place to duplicate the effect of brass fanfares and riffs bounding from one balcony to another in Baroque cathedrals. By including Gabrieli, Mr. Gilbert showed that composers from that era were spatial music pioneers.

Mr. Boulez’s “Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna” is a work from the mid-1970s scored for eight diverse groups of instruments, with each group including one or more melodic instruments and percussion. The work was a tribute to Maderna, Mr. Boulez’s close colleague, who died in 1973. As such, much of the music has a somber cast. Mr. Boulez’s high modernist language and 12-tone techniques have put off some listeners. But in this score the delicacy and specificity of his writing are wondrous. And the sheer drama of the music came through, with groups of instruments placed high and low all over the hall. Though the rhythmic content is often intricately complex, a steady, subdued drumbeat enhances the ritual element of what is, after all, a memorial piece.

The “Don Giovanni” scene was a fascinating experiment that did not quite work. The main orchestral music was performed by an ensemble on one side of the hall, conducted by Mr. Gilbert. But the singers, headed by the bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as Giovanni, used almost the entire space, including audience sections, as a stage. Also scattered about were members of the Oratorio Society of New York and the Manhattan School of Music Chamber Choir (directed by Kent Tritle), in costume for Giovanni’s ball: the women in surreal white gowns with puffy, powdered white wigs; the men in tuxedos or black suits.

There were some captivating effects, though. In the trio, when Donna Elvira (Keri Alkema), Donna Anna (Julianna Di Giacomo) and Don Ottavio (Russell Thomas) show up in masks at Don Giovanni’s ball, intending to expose him as a lecher and killer, the three singers wandered separately through the rows in my section. Hearing the individual voices coming from separate places gave a spatial jolt to the trio.

It was also revealing to have some separation between the dance bands, with Mr. Tritle and Joshua Weilerstein (an assistant conductor at the Philharmonic) helping out. But the echoing acoustics muddled the textures so much that the music seemed a little stodgy. Still, in this inspired scene, Mozart evokes an effect he encountered many times in aristocratic ballrooms, where he would hear the music of different dance bands mingling together. So it was fitting to include Mozart as an experimenter in spatial composition.

The Stockhausen was performed as conceived with three orchestras and three conductors, Mr. Gilbert and two composer-conductor colleagues: Magnus Lindberg and Matthias Pintscher. “Gruppen” is an organic piece with dazzling instrumental colors, craggy rhythmic energy and astringent sonorities — both dissonant and beautiful. Hearing the music volleyed among three ensembles ratchets up the dramatics. There are few moments in “Gruppen” when Stockhausen just piles it on. Instead he uses the distance between ensembles to highlight arresting, challenging details. The audience broke into prolonged applause and cheers.

Ives’s “Unanswered Question” is a 20th-century landmark of spatial music. In the background the strings of the orchestra play placid, hushed diatonic chords that slowly move up and down the scale. Here that backdrop was given added luster by dividing the strings into three sections on separate platforms. The solo trumpet posing cosmic questions emerged from a distant high balcony, while the four flutists who struggle for answers were placed in the dead center of the hall. Mr. Gilbert, assisted by Mr. Weilerstein, led a glowing, serene yet suspenseful performance.

If only programs like this one were regular offerings, not just ambitious special projects. Mr. Gilbert pushed to make “Philharmonic 360” happen. He should keep pushing.

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Critic's notebook: ‘Gruppen' surround-sounds New York
July 03, 2012 By David Patrick Stearns and INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC

http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-03/news/32509143_1_surround-sound-instrumental-groups-concert

Many eyes in the symphonic world were on conductor Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic over the weekend as he created his most daring project yet: a concert of surround-sound works that included excerpts from Mozart's Don Giovanni, but more significant, one of the avant-garde Everests of the orchestral literature, Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen.

Besides being a logistical feat, the project had true event status in a city where even everyday life can be an event. The two performances were sold out weeks in advance. Medici TV offers a free video stream starting at 2 p.m. Friday for 90 days (www.medici.tv). Anticipation for the concert ran so high that my walking in the door carrying a Gruppen score from the Free Library made me several new best friends.

By the end, I'd happily have given it away were it mine to give: Stockhausen had been demystified in the opposite of the desired direction — and not just because new technology had leached the surround-sound of novelty. As much as he was the most ceaseless, fearless musical explorer among the late-20th-century avant-gardists, Gruppen was not his most durable piece. On Saturday, it came off as a cul-de-sac not worth the heroic effort needed to play it.

The fact that such disappointment hardly deflated the overall experience is the takeaway lesson. Though ostensibly the main attraction, Gruppen accounted for only 25 minutes of a two-hour-plus concert. More important, the alternative venue rebooted audience expectations: The concert wasn't just off the Lincoln Center campus, but actually at the Park Avenue Armory — a special-event space that jams preconceived notions.

And it was done with style. The program was snazzily titled "Philharmonic 360." About 1,400 listeners were positioned on the floor and in bleachers in the armory's drill hall surrounded by as many as eight instrumental groups. During the Act I finale from Don Giovanni, singers — many wearing extravagant riffs on 18th-century wigs — moved through the space as numerous plot strands converged with a cumulative effect that Stockhausen would have been wise to take note of. What did all that — plus Pierre Boulez's Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna and some antiphonal Gabrieli brass music — add up to?

Plenty. For years, I've tried to make sense of Boulez's Rituel, but was confounded by its lack of linear progression on recordings. In fact, the piece was written to correspond with itself spatially, among the aforementioned eight instrumental groups that call out to each other from one area of the hall to another. That's very different from the usual parade of musical ideas. And since Boulez is a sensualist, each of the instrumental groups operated with a distinctive sound and purpose, even if you weren't immediately sure what that purpose was. Rather miraculously, the spatial element revealed how Boulez built a sense of conclusion and finality with increasing use of silence.

In contrast, Gruppen seemed guided by more internal motivation that, for much of its duration, seemed like three different planets minding their own business, enjoined only by a common solar system. Of course, there are internal links that delight musical analysts. And, later on, the piece has arresting brass writing created by the three-orchestra interaction, as well as an exhilarating, cacophonous climax. But in contrast to later, more hypnotic Stockhausen works such Stimmung, the mid-1950s Gruppen asks you to take its compositional alchemy on faith — because it's not apparent to the naked ear.

With the rise in overall performance standards, Gruppen is no longer a mass of sound that immediately puts your ears on overload. In fact, the New York Philharmonic's performance was as clean as can be — thanks, no doubt, to the noted composers Magnus Lindberg and Matthias Pintscher conducting the other two orchestras — effectively lifting a veil from the piece, allowing the conclusion that there's less in it than what meets the ear. Later, when Stockhausen began writing a massive cycle of plotless operas, each named after a day of the week, one critic described the works as a great musical mind talking to itself. Perhaps this obscure dialogue began with Gruppen.

Poor Stockhausen died in 2007 at 79 with much of his equity already used up. Well before he alienated the world by declaring the 9/11 tragedy to be "the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos," he had bought back his Deutsche Grammophon recordings, making them marginally available, at prices that discourage the curious.

So the usual dissemination process — in which a composer's aesthetic is absorbed by others and later reflected back at its source — hasn't happened for Stockhausen. The jury is still out. And that's why conductor Gilbert was right to make Gruppen the main attraction whether it deserved to be: The piece is still ripe for discovery. And that creates an event.
 
Not sure how this sites works, but tomorrow starts a stream of the Concert for the next 90 days. It seems free, but I noticed one needs to register there to watch a whole show. A window came up to register and stopped the a show I was watching.

Linked event: Date - July 6, 2012

http://www.medici.tv/#!/new-york-philharmonic-park-avenue-armory-alan-gilbert-mozart-stockhausen

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medici.tv's first ever webcast of the New York Philharmonic in the United States: Philharmonic 360, a co-presentation of the New York Philharmonic and Park Avenue Armory, which will showcase a spectacular program of spatial music from Gabrieli, Mozart and Ives to Boulez and Stockhausen!

The Philharmonic 360 program begins with Giovanni Gabrieli's Canzon XVI, a piece from the 16th century arranged by Arthur Frackenpohl. Then, Pierre Boulez’s Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna, with New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert on the podium. He will also conduct a semi-staged Finale from Act I of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, with stage direction and design by Michael Counts. The cast features bass-baritone Ryan McKinny in the title role, along with bass-baritone Keith Miller (Leporello), soprano Julianna Di Giacomo (Donna Anna), tenor Russell Thomas (Don Ottavio), soprano Keri Alkema (Donna Elvira), mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke (Zerlina), baritone Kelly Markgraf (Masetto) and dancer Brian T. Scott (Waiter). The program continues with Stockhausen’s Gruppen, one of the composer’s most iconic creations – a work for three orchestral ensembles, with Gilbert joined by two composers as additional conductors: Magnus Lindberg and Matthias Pintscher. The concert concludes with The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives.

And if you were wondering what "spatial music" is, Alan Gilbert said:
“What music is and what it means to us, how we experience it and the space in which we experience it – these are all questions that have come up in my mind. So I had the idea of building a program around the idea of spatial music; that is, music that relies on physical space, or is about the physical space in which it’s performed. I would like for the audience to feel that they are following a story line from the beginning of the evening to the end."

Picture: Chris Lee

New York Philharmonic

Alan Gilbert conductor
Magnus Lindberg conductor
Matthias Pintscher conductor

Michael Counts director and designer
Fisher Dachs Associates theatre design
Ken Roht choreographer
Brian Aldous lighting designer
Kyle Chepulis lighting designer
Kaye Voyce costume designer
Joshua Weilerstein assistant conductor

Ryan McKinny bass baritone (Don Giovanni)
Keith Miller bass baritone (Leporello)
Julianna Di Giacomo soprano (Donna Anna)
Russell Thomas tenor (Don Ottavio)
Keri Alkema soprano (Donna Elvira)
Sasha Cooke mezzo-soprano (Zerlina)
Kelly Markgraf baritone (Masetto)
Brian T. Scott dancer (Waiter)

Oratorio Society of New York
Manhattan School of Music Chamber Choir
Ken Tritle director
Ronnie Oliver, Jr assistant director
Gareth Morell rehearsal pianist and musical consultant
Location : Park Avenue Armory (New York, USA)
Recording date : 29-30/06/2012
Production : A Co-Production with Park Avenue Armory and the New York Philharmonic. Video Executive Producer: Vince Ford
 
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