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DECEMBER 19 - 25, 2003
A Lot of
Night Music
The
Spirit Survives
by Alan Rich
 Little
Joe’s mother is sick, but there’s no money for milk.
Joe and his friend Annette go to the village square to sing for
money, but that annoys Brundibár, the town minstrel. He drowns them
out with a loud song. With the help of the Cat, the Bird and the
Dog, Joe and Annette muster the village children, who defeat the
minstrel and save the Mother. Curtain.
That’s not much, as
opera plots go, but the history of Brundibár itself, which
I saw performed by a bunch of exuberant kids at Santa Monica’s Miles
Memorial Playhouse a couple of Fridays ago, is better yet. Its composer,
Hans Krása, created the short opera in Prague in 1938, for the children
of a Jewish orphanage. Came the Nazi takeover, and the establishment
of the concentration camp at Terezín (Theresienstadt) as a showcase
to prove to the outside world that Hitler’s thugs did indeed care
for the arts. Krása led 55 performances of Brundibár at Terezín,
including one before a visiting Red Cross commission, and one that
was filmed and circulated in a documentary about those lovely, art-loving
Nazis. Soon thereafter, Krása was dragged off to the gas chambers
at Auschwitz. In addition to the opera, his name survives in a small
repertory of chamber and vocal works, some of them composed during
his years of imprisonment.
Brundibár arrived
here garlanded in publicity, but it turns out to be a slight work,
its harmonies nicely spiced with a touch of Weill/Hindemith, its
tunes obviously the work of a man who knew how to make young singers
and their audiences feel good — which this ensemble certainly did,
thanks to Eli Villanueva’s staging and Daniel Faltus’ musical direction.
This was the latest production of Opera Camp, a project now 3 years
old, a partnership of the Los Angeles Opera and the Madison Project
of Santa Monica College, with additional collaboration this time
from the Museum of Tolerance and Santa Monica’s Miles Memorial Playhouse.
The value of such a project should be obvious every time you face
another snoozing, doddering operatic audience at the Music Center.
One further aspect of
this particular event moved me deeply: Next to me at the Miles Playhouse
sat a lady by the name of Ela Weissberger, smiling and giving off
waves of pride. It turned out that she had been the Cat in 1944
performances of Brundibár at Terezín (including the one on
film). Imagine! Imagine the memories this glorious old person can
wear like a bright medallion! Mrs. Weissberger immigrated to the
U.S. shortly after WWII and now lives in my old stomping ground,
New York’s Rockland County. (The Nazi-made film of Terezín’s children,
including a scene from Brundibár with Ela Weissberger, has
been incorporated into Prisoner of Paradise, Malcolm Clarke
and Stuart Sender’s new documentary on the treacherous charms of
Terezín. It opens here in late January.)
So there we were, this authentic piece of history and my humble
self, side by side, schmoozing about the 76 House and the Community
Market and Mr. Hitler. Tell me I don’t have the world’s
best job!
Clarinet, violin,
cello, piano: It’s an attractive combination, and you’d automatically
assume the presence of a large romantic repertory for such a combo
— Schumann, surely, and Hummel and Spohr. But no; my search of Grove’s
Dictionary yields nothing. The brave young ensemble called Antares
(a large red star in Scorpio) must seek its repertory in the present
and the as-yet-unwritten. Another group of similar constitution
— Tashi, whose members included Peter Serkin and Richard Stoltzman
— has come and gone, leaving some impressive footsteps for Antares
to follow. If it’s as good as it sounded at its debut concert at
LACMA last week, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Antares drew a large
and friendly crowd, much of it drawn from the past and present student
body at Crossroads, that superior private high school with one of
the best music programs in town; the group’s pianist, Eric Huebner,
is a Crossroads product, and still something of a local hero for
some bright and ballsy music making while he was still a student.
Now the group — whose other members are violinist Vesselin Gellev,
cellist Rebecca Patterson and clarinetist Garrick Zoeter — has been
pulling down residencies and prizes all over the map and eliciting
the beginnings of a repertory of its own.
Charles Wuorinen’s Tashi filled most of the first half
of the program, music written and named for the previous
ensemble. I’ve nurtured an ongoing admiration for Wuorinen’s
music, with its high quotient of braininess. But if I needed an
East Coast paradigm to illustrate why I’m happier on the West
Coast, this very correct, very complicated, intricate music would
do just fine. I just can’t write about this music anymore;
you can kick a dead cat for just so long. The program’s second
half had newer music and newer ideas. Antares is a lively bunch;
the free swing of Kevin Puts’ Simaku and a lovable
James Matheson trifle called Buzz brought things to life
on both sides of the stage. It wasn’t all fluff, either; a
long, haunting, jazz-tinted piece called Exil by a Stuttgart
composer named Volker David Kirchner evoked the spirits of Bartók
and Miles Davis along its expressive path.
It had been nearly
20 years since local-born Michael Tilson Thomas last conducted
the local orchestra. His behavior on the Philharmonic podium in
his last appearances here — not easily forgotten, including a version
of the “Eroica” best described as “bratty” — had brought down management’s
wrath, and deservedly so. As a vehicle for riding back into the
affections of the hometown folks, he chose curiously: Mahler’s Sixth
Symphony, of all the Viennese master’s off-putting works the one
most hopelessly awash in pure Weltkvetsch.
In those 20 years away,
most of them spent sopping up adoration in the community he was
put on Earth to serve, the Tilson Thomas legend has grown to resemble
the exact size and shape of San Francisco itself. The two elements
were inseparable in the Mahler: a flamboyant opportunism that paid
little heed to such matters as musical form and narrative, but feasted
blatantly and gorgeously upon every disconnected moment. Since the
matter at hand was a work of exasperating prolixity and — especially
in its final half-hour (or was it half a day?) — of ugliness difficult
to match anywhere in the symphonic repertory, the exercise left
the world no worse off than before. Bad music, badly chosen and
performed no better than it deserved: It was the same old MTT; you’d
know him anywhere.
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