Mao to Mozart (Moview Review)

MAO TO MOZART: ISAAC STERN IN CHINA

Produced by Harmony Film Group in 1980, Director: Murray Lerner. 

Running Time: Approximately 1 hour and 25 minutes in color

First of all, let me introduce all of you who have never heard of him to Isaac Stern.  He is a celebrated and professional concert violinist who lived through most of the twentieth century and died an octogenarian in 2002.  He was closely associated with the New York Philharmonic; he won several awards including the Medal of Freedom, a Kennedy Center Honor and he was the one largely responsible for saving Carnegie Hall from destruction when the powers that be in Manhattan wanted to tear it down.  He raised both financial and moral support for its preservation.  Stern also contributed greatly to the nurturing of new young musical talent and to the preservation of musical treasures.  But the highlight of his humanitarian service was his visit to China in 1979.  In view of the fact that U.S.-China relations are very much a current subject in the news and perhaps entering a new phase of diplomatic accord, I think it appropriate that we take another look at this classic documentary that has captured so many hearts and opened so many eyes and won the Oscar for Best Feature Length Documentary released in 1980 .  After three decades it is still being viewed and can be rented through Netflix.

The purpose of the trip according to him was essentially to get to know the people – a “howdya-do more so than a concert tour.”   Stern in the film puts it this way: I went “to say hello through music.”  And the people there loved him.  They opened their doors wide to him – the doors to their hearts as well as their music conservatories.  He observed them, instructed them, performed with them, ate and drank with them, and most of all listened to what they had to say and how they regarded western classics.  He even did a lot of hugging and made deep and lasting and affectionate friendships with many individuals.  By the time of the trip he was quite a corpulent man; he did not move at a very rapid pace.  But he was very warm to everyone; they treated him like a grandfather and hung onto his every word and gesture, however much he had to depend upon interpreters.  Even during rehearsals for a concert he was prevailed upon to give, the auditorium was packed, every seat taken.  Think of it: they lapped up the rehearsals.  Ever heard of that on this side of the globe? 

It is a very intimate picture we are given, but it is clear that on a grand scale he contributed enormously to the opening of cultural exchange doors between our two countries.  He was on a mission to bring faraway places together, and he succeeded beyond all expectations.     

What gives the film its place in the pantheon of great documentary work is the fact that Stern keeps, if not a low, then at least a middling profile all through it.  The Chinese people, especially the many gifted young music students, are the stars.  Lots of local color and scenery is photographed – the Great Wall, peasants working the rice fields, the streets of Shanghai and Peking with bicycles everywhere, river barges, breathtaking mountains and rivers, vaudeville shows highlighted by some of the most skillful acrobatics my eyes have ever beheld!  There are extended sections of the footage that simply take us around, without narration.  I experienced a tremendous glow when near the beginning of his tour a Chinese orchestra – on their own instruments, bearing little resemblance to ours – plays “Oh, Susanna” to welcome him, and they play it smartly and excitedly and with phenomenal skill. 

The best parts of it for me, however, are the music lessons.  In the narration he observes that the Chinese were not accustomed to playing music “with passion or variety of color.”  Watching him draw the passion and color out of those inhibited students, showing them how to follow through with the bow, and how to play as if they were singing brought me to tears.  He urges one young girl in particular, who has just given him a neat, accurate and perfunctory rendition of a piece, to sing the notes, using her dainty voice.  She does.  Then he tells her to play it again as if she were singing through the instrument, exactly as she has just sung it.  She does, and the difference is astonishing.  She looks so pleased with herself, knowing she has made a tremendous breakthrough.  You can see the light dawn.

The people teach him a few things too.  He learns about their history.  He hears about the so-called Cultural Revolution under Mao and how it impacted so brutally upon the musicians, how the Communists tried to eliminate all trace of the culture of “foreign devils.”  We hear the Director of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Tan Shuzhen, relate the gothic horror tale of his imprisonment and torture.  Tan tells the tale straight into the camera, all the excruciating details, over the space of five minutes or so. 

Stern learns how far advanced their musicianship is, far more than he ever expected.  And he learns how much more open their world is to new discoveries than western propaganda had led us to believe.  And you cannot help but be fascinated when they show him their own instruments and acquaint him with how they are played.  And for us music lovers there are enjoyable performances of such masters as Mozart and Beethoven and Brahms and Kreisler, with Stern on the solo violin and the native conductor and orchestra, all in perfect harmony and tandem with each other’s tempo and rhythm. 

There are, as in most dvds, special features, called extras in this case.  One is a titled biographical summary of Stern’s life, telling you far more than I have room to mention here.  And there is a documentary short called “Musical Encounters” that deals with Stern’s return to China twenty years later – in 1999.  We get to see some of the children in the first film grown up and keeping on with their careers two decades later.  Warm reunions!  And more of the same kind of mutually edifying moments of give and take!  I have only one regret – that I never had the chance to meet this marvelous man, shake his hand, and thank him for what he did.  Music as Cultural as well as Spiritual Healer!  I urge all of you to take the trip with him. 

Friendshipwise: A Riddle (Poetry)

                           Otherwise friends

                           never chance to be what

                           contrariwise

                           they need not see

                           to take to heart or

                           having seen in a measure

                           want not as much

                           as they might

                           otherwise

                           to chance a start.

                           Sometime friends

                           seldom become what

                           timewise

                           they would do well

                           to pursue or

                           having pursued

                           somewhat might

                           in not further pursuing

                           otherwise

                           undo.

                           Close friends never

                           neglect to enjoy what

                           experiencewise

                           they need not fear at

                           greater length

                           to undertake or

                           having chanced for

                           the most part would

                           futurewise

                           pursue

                           for themselves and

                           each other’s sake.

Claude Bolling, Tthe Supereme Crossover Artist

There is no way for me to ask my readers for a show of hands that would be visible to me, but I will ask my questions anyway:  How many of you are jazz lovers?  Now-   how many of you are classical music fans?  Do the same hands go up in both instances?  I feel confident that for many of you that is the case.  So how would you particular folks like to have both in the same package?  If you would, the name of Claude Bolling should be familiar to you, though it may not be.

    

Nothing amazes me more than the fact that so many music lovers I have talked to, even a few professional musicians, confess that not only is the work of this man unfamiliar to them but that the very name itself is equally so.  How can this be?  He is a six-time winner of the Grand Prix du Disque and has received international acclaim as a composer as well as a conductor, arranger and pianist.  He has been celebrated mainly for his own compositions.  A musicologist named Bobby Finn describes his work with these words: “There is great fluctuation of  mood. . .caused by the constant dialogue between the jazz and the classical elements, which seem to fight, to interrupt, to stimulate, to mimic and even to embrace each other.”  He is the supreme crossover composer – betwixt the two musical traditions.  Duke Ellington, among others, greatly admired Bolling’s achievements and encouraged him in his work. 

What makes my difficulty in finding other music lovers who know of him even more amazing is that his compositions are not hard to locate.  It is not as though he is some relic from some stone age.  He is alive and functioning in the twenty-first century, a modern master.  His recordings, over thirty in number and covering a space of almost forty years, all do a mighty business and are easy to obtain.  They can be ordered on line, and one is likely to find some of them in the remnant of the record stores that have not succumbed in their competition with the Internet.    

He was born in Cannes, France in 1930 and studied at the Nice Music Conservatory.  He has also written scores for over one hundred films, mostly French, and he played a big part in the revival of traditional jazz music in the 1960s.  But he has also worked with classical musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma, Pinchas Zukerman and Maurice Andre. 

Two of Bolling’s discs are especially exciting to me, both of them on the order of modern day chamber pieces.  One of them has the word in its title – Suite for Chamber Orchestra and Jazz Piano.  The other is entitled simply Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano, but it fits the mold just as surely.  Their content may be modern and “loose”, but the form in which they are set is chamber classical.  Bolling himself is at the piano, and you have never heard any better musicianship on the keyboard than he renders.

What is meant by Chamber Music?  The current definition is: music written for and performed by a small ensemble of instruments with just one performer on each separate part in the score.  A chamber piece ranges on the average anywhere from two to seven or eight musicians.  Quartets, quintets, trios, duets, sextets, etc.!  That is now – the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  The term, however, has undergone considerable evolutionary change over the last four hundred years.  During the 1700s orchestras were very small compared with the 1800s and 1900s.  They were not much bigger than some of our chamber ensembles are today.  It was not until the orchestra grew to a certain sweeping size that the smaller ensembles took on the distinction of being a separate genre of musical construction. 

In the pre-Baroque era there was hardly such a thing as a concert orchestra.  Instrumental music was generally not played in large auditoriums, except perhaps to accompany choral presentations.  Apparently the word “chamber” came to be attached to the small ensembles as a reference to the restricted environments in which they were performed.  Sometimes it was the court or private chamber of a king or prince; at others it was the private residence of a nobleman (so-called).  Sometimes the music was not meant to be given studied attention but served as background for social gatherings.  We have all been to parties or social affairs at which the stereo is throbbing in the corner somewhere.  The people present hear it and relax in the ambiance that it creates but focus on each other and engage in conversation, the music just barely on the edge of consciousness.  The recording only adds a certain color or mood to the occasion.  The guests rarely ever sit down and listen intently.  Somewhat like that it was on occasion, when chamber was all that was.

Of course, most chamber music now – by our definition – is played on a stage or in a setting where an audience does give it full consideration.  There are no more “chambers” as such.  Quartets and trios and the like are given the same respect as orchestral works, even if they do not usually generate the kind of sound swell or size of audience or prestige that the larger works do.

Bolling’s Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano, 34 minutes in running time, comprises seven movements with a solo flute (the flutist being the equally world renowned Jean-Pierre Rampal, another study himself) accompanied by piano, percussion and string bass.  This is a chamber work not only in terms of its reduced instrumental size but with regard to its suitability as background music at that party or social gathering.  It contains some of the most arm flapping, hip gyrating and feet scrambling music you are ever likely to hear as well as some of the coolest and sauciest and most torrid.  Moods vary greatly, as they would have to for this to earn the designation of “suite.”  In the last four minutes we hear something akin to a foot-pounding Native American or African tribal dance rhythm, with the flute providing the melody in a ceremonial solo fashion.  On the tail end of this, the recording comes to a stomping, wild, frenzied finish.        

Suite for Chamber Orchestra and Jazz Piano runs 48 minutes and consists of five movements.  In this one, Bolling may use a so-called “chamber orchestra,” but at the core this too is a genuine chamber piece, the extra instrumentation in no way detracting from the intimate, small-room setting.  The suite begins like a formal early 19^th century ensemble rendition and by gradual sleight of hand deftly transforms itself into something for which there is no easy pigeonhole.   By the time he has pranced and promenaded and swung and swaggered his way through the three quarters of an hour, you will appreciate something the famous Bobby McFerrin once said.  He recalled what his mentor/maestro Leonard Bernstein had taught him – “that it’s all jazz.” 

The contrasts in this suite are phenomenal.  Everything from a crawl to a mad rush, from old style courtliness to contemporary hoof beats, from fox trot to ballroom grace can be savored, and he moves from one to the other in one breath.  There are no seams.  By the time it ends, you will not know for sure where the classical has left off and the jazz has begun or vice versa.  His left hand may know what his right hand is doing, but each gives unfailing respect to the other.  What a payload!  As you listen, watch your blood pressure and remember to breathe. 

Other recordings of his in the same jazz/classical vein are: Concerto for Guitar and Jazz Piano; Suite for Violin and Jazz Piano; Picnic Suite for Guitar, Flute and Jazz Piano; and Suite for Cello and Jazz Piano.

As a crossover listener I have been into Bolling’s music for years and have delighted immensely in everything of his I have heard.  I invite you to make his acquaintance, if you have not already.  He is a universe unto himself.  Google him, if you must.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Movie Review of “The Tree of Life”

“The Tree of Life”  (2hrs & 19 min)

Any assemblage of devout people could not help but be drawn into a round of lengthy discussion after a shared viewing of this expansive production.  Within minutes after it gets underway we are told, in the voice-over of a mother playfully attentive to her small children, that we have two ways to go on our human journey:  the way of grace or the way of nature.  Grace is loving, giving and forgiving.  Nature is self-serving, indifferent, uncaring.  Thence we set out on a quest to see this much heralded universal truth worked out in the lives of her family, which I surmise is meant to serve as a microcosm for the whole race of humanity.  Agony and ecstasy for the following two-hours-plus do a dance across a wide expanse of territory both palpable and ethereal.   

A powerful tale shimmers beneath the surface of this production – from the gifted hand of writer/director Terence Malick, for whom I have great regard. (His “Days of Heaven” is one of my all-time favorites.)  If only this tale had managed to come fully to the surface and play out without undue distraction.  His work here is sensitive and inspired, but his reflections about self-discovery, divine/human encounter, wonderment and the loss of innocence do not come forth with quite the sharpness or boldness that I would have liked.  A flawed attempt at a masterpiece, surely!  Malick evidently thought that the drama itself was not substantial enough, that it needed to be submerged in a vast deep blue sea of cosmic explosions, volcanic eruptions, windblown landscapes, busy ocean waves, and natural wonders.  Even some prehistoric animals put in brief appearances. 

         

The acting is the most inspired feature.  Jessica Chastain plays the mother, and she is luminous in her portrayal of a 1950s stay-at-home wife in conflict with the domineering husband/father upon whom she is economically dependent, exuding a quiet understanding of her three preadolescent boys that her husband learns almost too late that he does not possess.  And she does it all with a very scanty use of dialogue.  Brad Pitt is completely plausible and potent as the husband.  And not the least in the casting is Hunter McCracken as the oldest and preadolescent son Jack, whose odyssey of body and spirit is the pivotal one in the film.  He is nothing short of marvelous. 

The film actually has four parts.  The first one, out of sequence, takes us into the later life of the household, when an untimely death is visited upon them.  It lasts about twenty slow minutes, before we are hurled into the second part, when most of the previously mentioned cosmic phenomena take place, suggestive of Creation in the making and the dawn of life on earth.  Almost forty minutes of the footage has passed when the third and longest part gets underway – the flashback to Jack’s earlier struggle leading to his eventual rebellion.  This is by far the most immediately affective of the four parts, as out of focus and disrupted as some of it is.  I thought the scenes in which the boys interact in the absence of the grownups were the most moving in the entire picture.  The fourth is a quite confusing glimpse into the soul wrestling of the grown-up Jack (Sean Penn).  In this last phase of the tale things gets quite blurry, especially with regard to the sense of time and place.  The strange family reunion we witness (Is Jack daydreaming it or is it for real on some level?  Not clear!) does make for a feel-good ending.   

The major problem for me with “The Tree of Life” is the frenetic style of the editing.  The scenes shift at such a nervous pace that much of what is being said gets garbled in the ambitious, overactive cinematic process.  So much of the characters’ thoughts are voiced over, but it is not always easy to tell whose thoughts we are hearing or to whom they are being directed.  As beautiful and mysterious as the images are by themselves, I found much of them ultimately laborious and distracting to sit through.  In fact, that is exactly what the movie seems to do – endlessly belabor, pushing the running time far past the two hours that would have been adequate.  I had the feeling that the cinematographer and the film editor believed that anything they could do they should do.

I wanted very much to be carried away by this movie, before I saw it; it sounded so inviting to my mystical nature and my personal taste.  When I was not carried away, I went back for a second viewing, still hoping that something special was there that I had missed, but to no avail.  While it is not a total failure, I still think it falls short of a masterpiece.  It does stir some profound chords, which may translate into more uplifting music for some viewers than they did for me.  I do not begrudge anyone that experience.  

Movie Review of "The Iron Lady"

 (1 hr & 45 min, 2011)

There are four good reasons why I am glad that I saw this biopic of Margaret Thatcher, the first and so far only woman to be elected Prime Minister of Great Britain, serving from 1979 until 1990.

First of all, it has great historical value.  It sinks its spade deep into the 1980s, a period in western civilization when crucial things were happening not only in England but on an international scale, when what we call the Global Village took dramatic shape before the eyes of millions and began testing the sovereignty of nations in a new and complicating fashion.  Not the least of the developments on the plus side was the ending of the Cold War and on the negative side the endangerment of middle class society in western countries.  In struggles related to both, Thatcher played a large part.

Secondly, we get to trace the life of a lady who used her strength of personality and the heft of her imagination to pave the way for women in politics in the latter half of the twentieth century.  Under her inspiration many others of her sex have excelled in positions of leadership.  She was a pivotal player on the world stage, and she built her career not by being born in the lap of luxury and floating to the top but by working her way up from the bottom, shedding the stigma of a “mere” grocer’s daughter.  I am personally amazed that the woman at this moment in time, after all the contention and controversy she has been through, is still among the living.  She is eighty-six.      

Thirdly, I got to watch Meryl Streep, one of my favorite actresses, give one of her fine imposing performances.  What a dynamic marvel she makes of an embattled woman, pushing, persevering, agonizing and aging before our eyes.  Even without the brilliant makeup job, the soul of her character remains consistently visible.  Those sequences in the film depicting her encroaching Alzheimer’s and her conversations with her dead husband are so well written and intimate that they seem to transcend the subject of Thatcher herself.  We could be following the trajectory of anyone in a state of dementia and striving to let go of someone departed.  One memorable line sounds out the alienating effect of the disease: “When did I lose track of everyone?”

And fourthly, the film focalizes that slippery slope on which devotion to duty as opposed to personal ambition, and true leadership as opposed to absolute rule, become confused with each other in the forward rush of events and decision making.  Power is certainly a two-edged sword, and in more cases than not it is the one who wields it who feels its slicing edge all as much as those on the receiving end of it.  As for her politics, I will leave it to you readers to construe as you feel you must.

But at the least we can all agree that the Iron Lady lived up to that title, and increasingly so with the passage of time.  Recognition should be given to the movie’s director Phyllida Lloyd and the original screenplay writer Abi Morgan, neither of whom is familiar to me.  Perhaps in time they will be! 

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com  I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net