Brahms trauma, New York the enemy, and the Bake-Off Cinematic Universe
Sharon's Weekly Head Dump
Well, my week was just trucking along, my primary source of agony being the eternal struggle of not practicing enough and falling behind (falling behind what, Sharon? I don’t know, just BEHIND) and then the bombshell landed that the New York Philharmonic has poached Gustavo Dudamel from LA.
I am, to be honest, not cut up over Dudamel leaving so much as I am affronted at the AUDACITY of New York City. I mean, look at these passages from the NYT article (bolding is mine):
When Dudamel appeared at the [New York] Philharmonic last spring, for a two-program Schumann symphony cycle, some players, hoping to win him over, showed up to rehearsals bearing gifts and handwritten notes. Inside his dressing room, a group of musicians gave him a bottle of the Brooklyn-made Widow Jane bourbon, telling him the Philharmonic would welcome him if he could find a way to spend more time in New York.
[Deborah Borda] recounted meeting him secretly in various European cities over the past year, often flying in and out within 24 hours to avoid suspicion, as she tried to secure a deal. (Seeing him in Los Angeles, she said, “just didn’t feel kosher.”)
Borda offered Dudamel two gifts while wooing him. One, given early in the search, was a program book from a Philharmonic tour of Venezuela in 1958, with a cover designed by the artist Carlos Cruz-Diez.
The other, which he received as the deal was being finalized, was a pencil that was used to compose music by an artist who will now be his predecessor: Leonard Bernstein.
SNEAKY SNEAKY SNEAKY. ([Saw Gerrera voice] “Lies! Deception!”) If you’re going to steal our music director, have some integrity and do it out in the open, and without bribery!!!!!
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was taught to look down on Southern California and to see Los Angeles as the enemy. When I got here I was astounded that no one in LA actually cares about SF and that the enmity only goes one way. I assumed that meant LA had no enemies, but now I get it.
New York is the enemy.
(Fun fact: a New York Times reporter emailed me about using the above tweet in an article and I was ready to celebrate finally being acknowledged by the New York Times on a technicality, and then the article came out and I was nowhere to be found in it. I have at this point been written about in the LA Times, Washington Post, SF Chronicle, etc. etc. and the NYT remains the sole major American outlet I have yet to appear in. This is not a thing I am hugely invested in, by the way, just a funny thing I can pretend to be upset about.)
Now everyone is furiously abuzz about who will be replacing Dudamel as MD of the LA Phil, and while it makes a lot of sense for Susanna Mälkki—currently the LA Phil’s principal guest conductor—to get the post, this is my secret dream:
I have written previously about how incredible Xian Zhang is and my glee that Alex Ross agrees with me. It is probably a long shot; this article names a whole slew of contenders and Zhang is nowhere to be found on the list. But in the spirit of conquest, I think we should steal from New York’s neighbor for not doing their part to prevent the Dudamel-poaching. Seems fair.
How to make Brahms better
Brahms’ music is the kind of thing I like in theory; it’s romantic, it’s lush, it’s got some killer themes, it is—like me—obsessed with Clara Schumann. In practice, though, his music doesn’t always do it for me. The buildups are very satisfying (Johannes loves a slow burn) but then there are often just long stretches of just, like, dense musical rumination with “this meeting could have been an email” energy.
Brahms’ writing just has so much going on horizontally and vertically and not all performances make it work! Years ago I saw a studiomate at the SF Conservatory perform the Brahms First Concerto and absolutely kill it, which made me even more excited to go hear a well-known Brahms interpreter (whose playing I normally adore) play it with the SF Symphony, and I was astonished that said interpreter made the concerto feel very aimless.
Thanks to my years of music study, I also have Extra Brahms Trauma. (…Brahmsma?) An entire semester of Instrumental Conducting was devoted solely to Brahms’ “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” which, imho, is not just one of the worst things Brahms wrote, but one of the dullest works of all time. God, it freaking blows. (If you disagree, then please spend several months score-studying and air-conducting the whole thing while a conducting professor tells you you’re doing things wrong, but doesn’t give you pointers on how to improve, take a conducting exam with no rehearsal, and then get back to me. This cursed piece gives me so much Music School PTSD.)
Then, several years later, I was at a festival where another venerated Brahms interpreter (there are a lot of those out there, huh?) gave a special all-Brahms recital where they performed the full Op. 116, 117, 118, and 119 in one go.
For those of you who were not made to memorize the contents of dozens of opus numbers in music school, that’s a total of twenty works by Brahms in all. Twenty things by any one composer is already a lot, especially when said composer is, like Mahler, not a concise dude. Halfway through the recital I was exhausted, and by the end I was ready to get in a time travel machine and fight Brahms himself. (I’m way taller, I could totally take him.)
At the end all the other pianists were like “Wow, what a gift to hear so much Brahms played so well! That was amazing!” and I thought “Oh god there’s something wrong with me” so I frantically echoed the sentiment, and then on the ride back I was seated next to a highly respected pedagogue who asked me what I thought of the concert.
“Oh, uh, I thought it was great! So amazing to hear all that Brahms!” I said hastily, trying to look like a Good Serious Piano Student and not like someone who had just spent half a concert wondering if she was undergoing some kind of Sisyphean punishment in the afterlife (without the swoleness).
“Oh,” the respected pedagogue said sadly, turning to look wistfully out the window. “I thought it was too much. I don’t enjoy listening to that much Brahms at once.”
I was then stuck the whole drive trapped in the persona of someone who does enjoy listening to that much Brahms, unable to convey to the respected pedagogue that we were actually kindred spirits, and that’s why I just think honesty is the best policy now.
ANYWAY. I went to the LA Phil last weekend and there was a Brahms piece on the program…WITH A TWIST. It was a Brahms piano quartet arranged by Arnold Schoenberg. Yes, that Schoenberg, the twelve-tone guy. The program notes quoted Schoenberg’s rationalization for orchestrating the work:
1. I like the piece
2. It is seldom played
3. It is always very badly played, because the better the pianist, the louder he plays, and you hear nothing from the strings. I wanted once to hear everything, and this I achieved.
Relatable???
I was really struck how much the piece sounded…like Brahms, but not like Brahms. And it ROCKED. It had just enough of that lushness and thematic interplay but also felt more balanced and shockingly fresh and fun, thanks in large part to the use of xylophone and glockenspiel. Xylophone! In Brahms!
The fourth movement especially slaps SO HARD:
(You may have noticed a theme with these posts that the LA Phil just keeps making me like pieces/composers I’m not jazzed about: Beethoven’s 7th, Mahler, now Brahms. They are very good at doing that to me; I don’t know how much of this is Dudamel’s doing and how much of that is just the fundamental vibe of the LA Phil, but I am just slightly anxious about whether or not this pattern will continue with a new music director.)
I think everyone should read this book
One of my favorite categories of non-fiction is “book about a super specific thing that does such a good job explaining so many things about why the world is the way it is that it’s subtly changed my understanding of everything.” This is a very long category title and I need to figure out a snappier way to say all of that.
Reasons I read Sofi Thanhauser’s Worn: A People’s History of Clothing:
I’m mildly obsessed with textiles and clothing quality and thought it would be cool to learn more.
That’s it.
Reasons I now want to push Sofi Thanhauser’s Worn: A People’s History of Clothing on people:
The mere existence of clothing is something most people don’t ever think very much about and reading this book made me so aware about and grateful for the engineering miracle that is fabric and the ridiculous level of craftsmanship required to make even nondescript everyday clothes. Much as David Masumoto’s Epitaph for a Peach made me a more grateful and conscious consumer of produce, Worn has given me a greater awareness of clothing that comes with the added side benefit of me shopping less.
A history of clothing is also a history of the insane interconnectedness of everything, and to understand why the clothes on your back are there in the first place, you have to understand things like the history of the labor movement in America (and why things went very differently in the South than in the North), exactly how the British Empire intentionally destroyed Indian local economies and trapped farmers (colonialism!!!!), how economic power has shifted in and out of the hands of women over centuries, why you don’t want to feed a Scottish sheep too well, etc. There is a weird part of my brain that lights the heck up when I learn a bunch of “this explains a lot” -type information and this book just pushed that button so much.
In the endless discussion of the environmental devastation and rampant exploitation in the garment industry—particularly in fast fashion—a lot of people tend to say “Well, the problem is just really complex, nothing we can do about it, oh well!” The book doesn’t pretend that the problem is simple (see Point #2: everything is connected), but it demonstrates that it is something we are capable of understanding, and that there are things we can do about it, even if there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
If the increasing ubiquity of that menswear guy, as well as writers like Cora Harrington, are any indication, we’re having more conversations about craftsmanship, quality, and ethics in fashion. If the responses to their informative posts are any indication, we are a long way from all being on the same page about any of this stuff. I really wish I had the power to assign Worn as required reading to all the jabronis on Twitter who quite frankly have no idea what they are talking about.
I did actually learn a lot about textiles, so that was cool. (I also finished the book sorely tempted to get a sheep and learn to spin and weave my own wool. Luckily for my husband, we live in a small apartment in LA, so that’s an automatic non-starter.)
The Bake-Off Cinematic Universe
Once I was happy just watching GBBO. Then came the delight that was JBO and then, this week, we discovered—or rather, the algorithm forced a discovery on us of—GBBO: The Professionals.
This is a whole different show from GBBO: it’s not in a tent, it’s got different judges, it features teams instead of individual contestants, there is totally different music (more on that in a second) and the challenges are structured differently (no technicals here, as the competitors are professionals). The only thing that reminds you that this show is still part of the GBBO franchise is the presence of Liam, who was a contestant on GBBO, is a judge on JBO, and is a host here, which I think makes him the Nick Fury of the Bake-Off Cinematic Universe.
Some minor quibbles. The first is that the spirit of camaraderie—with contestants making friends and helping each other out—that makes original GBBO so charming is completely absent here. These pastry chefs came to win, not to make friends!
The second is that this show makes me want to bust Kool-Aid-Man-style into the editing room and rip the “Greatest Hits of Classical Music” CD out of the producers’ hands, because good LORD. Whoever is picking the music for this show attended exactly one (1) music appreciation class and thought “That’s it, that’s all the music that exists.” I actually really like Grieg’s Peer Gynt but having to hear “In the Hall of the Mountain King” about five times an episode makes my soul die a little.
All that aside, this show is mesmerizing to watch. I’m used to watching contestants on regular GBBO painstakingly ice wobbly cakes and struggle with making anything out of chocolate, and this show is porn if your idea of porn is highly competent pastry chefs turning out immaculate piping work at rapid-fire speeds and tempering the glossiest chocolate you’ve ever seen with mere flicks of their hands. (If that is not your idea of porn, kindly keep it to yourself.)
I also think that Paul and Prue on regular GBBO are quite tiresome now and the judges here, Benoit and Cherish, are a delight. Benoit’s facial expressions! Cherish’s military jackets!
Finally, this show gave me everything I didn’t know I wanted, and that is a French person saying the word “crunchy.”
Have a lovely weekend! 🎹