A short work for bassoon and piano by French composer Jacques Ibert has been published for the first time after laying nearly silent for ninety-seven years. Written in 1921, likely as the preliminary sight-reading portion of the Paris Conservatoire’s annual solo competition for high-achieving young bassoonists, the sixty-bar Morceau (French for “piece”) appears to have been almost completely ignored after it served its initial purpose, the only publicly available reminder of its existence being a terse listing on Oxford Music (formerly New Grove) Online: “Morceau de lecture, bn, pf, 1921”. To any casual reader, this listing could very easily have been confused with Ibert’s one other work for bassoon, the 1953 Carignane (sometimes titled Arabesque) for bassoon and piano. But the two works are indeed different, as Shenandoah Conservatory Professor of Bassoon, Ryan Romine, found out this past May.
“It was wild,” says Romine, who had secured an invitation to visit an immense private music collection while on a two-week vacation in the UK and Ireland. “I had arrived in the afternoon, but I didn’t have a chance to really go through the collection until late at night. So, as I was going through piece after piece, seeing all of these things I had never knew existed, I was the regular kind of tired but also completely jetlagged. I found this piece, thought ‘Well, that’s interesting. It must be some sort of arrangement,’ and then just took a few scans with my phone. It wasn’t until a few days later, when I was going back through the scans, that I realized what I was looking at!”
Even before returning to the UA, Romine emailed the scans to his good friend, Trevor Cramer of TrevCo Music Publishing. “Trevor has a great eye and immediately saw the value—both musical and historical—of getting this piece in front of the public,” said Romine. “He very quickly began working on preparing a modern engraving and securing copyright permissions from Ibert’s family. “Ibert’s grandchildren were fantastic and I feel beyond lucky and honored that they have trusted us to share this work with bassoonists everywhere.”
With a typical performance of just under one-and- a-half minutes, the piece is indeed tiny, but it is all Ibert—a clockwork accompaniment at the beginning, graceful melodies in the bassoon, and a melancholy yet detached air throughout. At times, one can see the composer trying to trip up the bassoonist. For example, the third line of the melody demands that the bassoonist make some awkward fingering combinations (in four sharps) sound effortless. A few lines later, the piano begins a new musical idea, playing in what is really 3/4 time while the bassoon must stay in 2/4. “The piece really is a joy to play—though a touch trickier than you think it’s going to be at first,” says Romine. “I am really looking forward to hearing players put their own spin on it in years to come.”
Ibert’s Morceau for bassoon and piano is now published under agreement by TrevCo Music Publishing.
(article received from the International Double Reed Society).
An Economist correspondent wonders whether he took his 14 year-old daughter to the right show:
This week your correspondent took his 14-year-old daughter to watch an orgy. It was the opening scene of Verdi’s “Rigoletto”, in a rather explicit production directed by David MacVicar at the Royal Opera House in London. Had we been sat in the opera house itself, she would probably have seen only a faint blur of nudity in the distance. However, we were watching a live telecast at our local cinema, so she saw gigantic close-ups of quivering nipples and flexing buttocks. She thought it highly amusing. It was followed by three hours of licentiousness and blood—like “Game of Thrones”, but with a less credible plot. In other words, a typical night at the opera. What kind of a terrible dad would subject his children to this art form?…
Decca’s Sheku advertising campaign has just splashed all over the site.
We hear there are 60 buses driving around Nottingham in this livery.
Do send us some shots.
Meantime, we’re listening to Sheku’s debut record, out today.
Lang Lang and students from his International Music Foundation will pay tribute to Leonard Bernstein at the Grammys’ “Salute to Classical Music” taking place at Carnegie Hall this afternoon.
According to a press release they will perform arrangements of Bernstein’s music, marking his ‘lifelong devotion to building bridges between genres, cultures, and social strata.’
You wonder what Lenny would have made of it all.
The Ministry of Culture says it is preparing documents for Russian owners of precious instruments to protect them from theft and customs harassment when travelling abroad.
They will extend the same courtesy to pedigree bows. More here.
Why can’t the EU do the same?
Florian Pichler, an Austrian, became the youngest player in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra when he won an audition for second trumpet in August 2014, at the age of 18.
But something went wrong. Two years later the orchestra refused to extend his contract and Florian set out to search a wider horizon in brass ensembles and symphony orchestras.
This week, he won an audition as trumpet in the Frankfurt Opera orchestra, together with the trombonist, Miguel Garcia Casas.
The music director has lashed out at the Semper Oper in an open letter, saying this would be his first and last Ring in the city unless conditions changed.
Due to lack of rehearsals, he charges, the Siegfried was of unacceptably low standard.
Apparently, rehearsals were cut back due to extra stage time needed for the social event of the year, the Semper Oper Ball.
The Leipzig String Quartet made it into the tabloids a couple of years back when its first violin, Stefan Arzberger, was charged with attempted murder after an incident with a fellow-guest in a New York hotel.
The case was never brought to trial and Stefan, who quit the quartet, is now living happily as a US citizen.
His successor, Conrad Muck, today sent us his notice to quit.
Conrad Muck, first violin of the Leipzig String Quartet since 2015, is leaving the ensemble in January 2018 at his own request to pursue new artistic projects. He plans to retain musical ties with the string quartet in the future.
The Polish tenor waited until he was past 50 before tackling the role of Carmen’s lover.
The Vienna press are in raptures.
You can see him on a *free* live stream from the Vienna Opera next Monday at 7pm local (1pm NY).
Four singers, speaking anonymously, have raised concerns about an international opera director who mingles his professional messages with sexual innuendos such as ‘I am interested in you’ and ‘I love your legs’.
The director says this is nothing more than innocent flirting, a device common to his profession.
The singers say they feel threatened. They fear that refusing his advances will cost them work in future.
We have heard of many similar episodes from other singers. It is so easy in the Facebook era for a director to contact colleagues off-site to make suggestions that he would not dare utter in front of others in the rehearsal room.
This is the new inappropriate.
Caption: No thanks, I’ve got rehearsal!
Next Tuesday, France 2 will show Hippocrate aux enfers, a documentary on the horrific medical experiments carried out on prisoners by Nazi doctors at Auschwitz.
The programme is made by a well-known TV doctor, Michel Cymes, whose two grandfathers were murdered in Nazi camps. As a GP, he cannot understand how German doctors could have broken their Hippocratic oath in this way.
Dr Cymes insisted that the film should have a new score in memory of the victims. He commissioned the composer Jean-Pascal Beintus and asked his friend Renaud Capuçon to record the soundtrack.
The music itself deserves a wider audience.
Word is out that casting director Cindy Tolan is seeking actors for the four lead roles in West Side Story – Maria (18-20), Tony (18-23), Bernardo (20-24) and Anita (20-24). All have to sing. Three must speak Spanish.
Tony Kushner is said to be writing the film script for Stephen Spielberg.
