Do-It Yourself Art
Nothing warms the cockles of the heart - whatever they may be - on a cool spring day more than a visit to Glassworks on Market at Ninth. Especially if you take the tour of this multi-function facility, which is contributing to one of the best new buzzes about Louisville - its growing reputation as a center of glass art. The city has a number of major collections and the Speed Museum is a major repository, plus now there are rumblings of a liaison between the University of Louisville and Glassworks to further teaching of this ancient art. you may want to catch April's series of participatory workshops and decorate your own flowerpot. No, really! Beginning on Friday, April 1 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Glassworks will supply participants with the decorative materials called frit, stringers and noodles - not, as you might suspect, a firm of attorneys, but jargon respectively for glass granules, glass sticks and, yes, strands resembling cooked pasta. It's $18 per person and all ages are encouraged to participate.
The Latest From Handel
I was reminded the other day of an old musical chestnut. An overeager fan asked W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan) if dear Mr. Bach was still composing and received this reply: "No, madam, he is by way of decomposing.” The same may be said of Beethoven and Handel, though they still seem to be churning the stuff out. Last month at the De Doelen concert hall in Amsterdam a recently discovered movement (the only portion found) from a lost Beethoven piano concerto was debuted. Hot on the heels of this event, the Louisville Bach Society is to give the premiere this month of a newly discovered work by George Frederick Handel of Messiah fame. It is a “Gloria in Excelsis” and will be performed Sunday, April 24 at 3 p.m. at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church at Bardstown Road and Rutherford Avenue. I am particularly keen to hear Julianne Baird, who has an immense reputation as a singer of the florid music of the baroque style and has made over 100 recordings. The performance of Handel will form part of a program that also includes eight-part motets by Gabrieli, Bach and Brahms, all under the urbane baton of Bach Society founder and music director Melvin Dickinson.
Women Shine in Orchestra Performances
The Louisville Orchestra has an intriguing line-up for its concerts April 21, 22 and 24. Giselle Ben-Dor is one of the best-known female conductors in the business and a former assistant conductor of the Louisville Orchestra, which she left to perform all over the world. Ben-Dor is joined by three Korean sisters I encountered when doing my own form of missionary work – bringing comfort and solace to the overprivileged by lecturing on opera aboard the mega-liner QM2. The Ahn Trio is a soulful and attractive group composed of twin sisters, Maria and Lucia, plus sister Angelia, who will perform a work entertainingly entitled Hardware Concerto, by a composer new to me, Kenji Bunch. The concert opens with Blue Cathedral by Jennifer Higdon and closes in a blaze of sound with Rimsky-Korsakov’s spectacular Scheherazade.
Final Thoughts
Few subjects kindle as much heat and as little light as comparing the acoustic qualities of different auditoriums. Part of the problem derives from the myth that there is such a thing as a multi-purpose hall. In recent decades, whenever American civic leadership was smitten by the “Edifice Complex,” it built vast auditoriums to serve all the arts, not taking account of the fact that what is a good concert hall will almost certainly be a lousy opera house or have impossible sight lines in ballet. The Kentucky Center’s Whitney hall is allegedly good to play in. The Orchestra players can hear one another, which is important in creating ensemble. Unfortunately, most other people, including the paying customers, can’t, or at least not very well. It is almost impossible to realize a thunderous fortissimo there, and certain section – the low strings notably – are often almost inaudible. It is a good house from Broadway musicals and for the grandest of grand operas and for ballet.
The most stunning acoustic event of recent months in Louisville was the Lang Lang recital on a Steinway piano at the W. L. Lyons Brown Theatre. The clarity of sound was amazing and every nuance of a very nuanced performance was a joy to the ear. Orchestra members complain about the mix of sound that emerges in the Brown, buy they have to admit they can make a real aural impact there. Most of the great concert halls and opera houses of Europe have 1,200 to 1,500 seats. The Kentucky Center has 2,400 seats. The MET has 4,000. Gigantism in American auditoriums is driven by economics. Large box-office returns are needed in the absence of the state funding that supports European music-making.
