Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Two Nights Only

Krunoslav has gently prodded me (shut up) to point out that The Podles is putting on a second show, and then a rerun of same, all this presumably without the olympic staircase diving, later in the month. In this one she will be doing her damndest to liven up Respighi's aggressively dreary Il Tramonto--seriously, I heard Horne go a few rounds with the piece and she either lost or fell asleep, one--and then performing all the roles in Ariadne auf Naxos. Kindly do not contradict Maury when he is in denial. You will know he is in denial when he begins speaking of himself in the third. Well, alright, have it your way. She will be introducing us forcibly to Haydn's Arianna a Naxos which one can only hope is merely Haydn's loving chamber arrangement of a piece written long after his death, but it's probably not, Haydn being a stickler for chronology (seriosly, those damn symphonies...what do you imagine comes after the 98th? Well don't say I didn't warn you, it's the 99th.) Speaking of Chronology, I see that one of the players is Ani Kavafian, who I believe is on the recording of the Quartet for the End of Time recorded right around the beginning of time, possibly with Haydn on clarinet and John McCain on Cello.

2 comments:

Dan Johnson said...

You are thinking of Ani Kavafian's sister, Ida Kavafian! (Fortunately, further confusion is prevented by the fact that black sheep Uma Kavafian never amounted to much as a fiddler.)

Anonymous said...

Maybe you don't know Haydn's Arianna. This is a terrific piece, a 15 minute operatic scena (two arias, each preceded by a very non-secco recit.) but accompanied by piano rather than orchestra. It's late Haydn, from around 1790, and shows him off as an opera composer better than his complete operas do. It's perfect for home performance: if you do it before a small audience in your living room, as I have, the effect is amazingly powerful.

It corresponds roughly to Es gibt ein Reich: Ariadne finds herself abandoned, dreams of love, and then falls into despair.