A note from the desert

Many thanks to Sam for picking up my blogging slack this week. I'm indeed in Reno for a music director search week, and apart from keeping a very busy schedule (packed with board lunches, radio interviews, staff meetings and donor dinners), I'm suffering the indignity of paying for internet service (is it me, or is $13.99 for 12 hours of internet just really galling? Or am I just full of internet entitlement?). But, couldn't resist forever, so here I am.

Just a thought about a combination of pieces that I'm doing here that I've been pleased with - the second half of my program is centered around the 1919 "Firebird" Suite by Stravinsky, which is prefaced by the "Bluebird" Pas de Deux from Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty", reorchestrated by Stravinsky. The reorchestration is really just a resetting for theater-sized orchestra that totally retains the charm of Tchaikovsky's original. What I like about the combination of these two pieces is on several different levels. First and foremost, I love the notion that "Sleeping Beauty" was premiered in 1890, "Firebird" in 1910 - a mere 20 years apart - and I can't imagine two pieces more divergent. Tchaikovsky has all the oom-pah-pah-ness of conventional ballet music; the contrast with "Firebird", with all that atmospheric creepiness in the opening, could not be greater. Then there is, of course, the odd connection in Stravinsky's reorchestration of "Bluebird". And then, the very surface connection (but connection nonetheless!) that both pieces are about birds.

But they work together in an odd way, "Bluebird" a charming miniature of four short dances (pas de deux, two variations and coda), and "Firebird" a monumental piece of morphing harmonies, modal melodies and an aura of exoticism. It's always fun to discover that two pieces that you like individually make an utterly new impression when taken together.