The crucial point about any performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is
NOT the "Ode to Joy," however keen some folks in the audience may be to
hum along when it comes.  Sure enough, the big finish came, and with it, a
riotous standing ovation Friday night in standing-room-only Silva Concert
Hall.

No, the telling moment of this enormous cathedral of music is in the
exactly "right" tempo of the first few bars, in sustaining the development
of the first movement, in neither dragging nor bouncing in the second
movement, in conveying the oceanic feeling of that incredibly beautiful
and impossibly subtle third movement, right after the heartbreaking theme
of resignation and acceptance...  and so on.

In all this and more, the musical checklist at the opening of the 31st
Oregon Bach Festival, was well served.  True, the brass section appeared as
if still in spring training, the timpani sounded slightly off key, but who
cares when all the strings, especially the cellos, and the woodwind section
play that well.

        At the helm of this noble enterprise stood
Miguel Harth-Bedoya. At 32, he is one of the most
impressively talented up-and-coming conductors of his generation.
To conduct a fine performance of the Ninth is similar
to the completion of a trans-Pacific solo swim "rather well."
The Peruvian-born maestro, with degrees from both
Curtis and Juilliard, already music director of
orchestras in Eugene, Fort Worth, and Auckland, is clearly
going places.

When he gets "there", where such as Simon Rattle or, closer to home,
Helmuth Rilling have gloriously established themselves, he will perform
Beethoven with the cohesion, energy and power which separates a great
performance from a good one.

The comparison may be unfair, but understandable at a festival attended by
travelers from far and wide who come for the purpose of hearing the Music
Rilling Makes.  (For that, we must wait a few more days.)

I am glad to say that the other pillar of the festival, Thomas Quasthoff,
was present -- in every way.  Juliane Banse sounded indisposed, Ingeborg
Danz was replaced by the splendid Milagro Vargas, and a tenor new to the
festival, Frederick Urrey.  Quasthoff was the rock, the foundation of the
Ode, the entire concert.  He is likely to be furious to hear this (so
please don't tell), but Quasthoff is a kind of double-edged sword:  all by
himself, he makes a concert special, and performing while standing next to
him is a daunting challenge to anyone.  He may be utterly charming as he
presents HIS flowers to the blushing concertmaster, he is the most
supportive colleague in the musical world, but there is nothing he can do
about the Quasthoff Phenomenon.  So, once again, on Friday night, that
warm, embracing, noble, mightily projected voice filled the hall and
sustained joy seemingly all by itself, even while the festival chorus
performed below its magnificent par.

Mind you, Kathy Romey's Festival Chorus is one of the greatest seasonal
(that is, non-permanent) choirs in the world, so "below par" means
"terrific," and it certainly was that Friday when the score called for
fortissimo.

But this very special chorus' usually thrilling floating pianissimi were
not there this time, most likely because of a clever plan that didn't quite
work.

As the peerless festival director Royce Saltzman explained before the
concert, there was in the program a "statement about our mission." The
festival is very much about choral works, and so the concert featured four
far-flung choirs, singing music from Sweden, Uganda, Israel, and Cuba --
then joining the festival chorus in the Ninth, with its call for the world
to unite in joy and brotherhood.  Who could find anything wrong with that?
The idea was grand; the execution did not live up to it.  Beethoven speaks
to and for "Millionen," and 13 young women from Israel singing pleasant
quasi-pop is not exactly in the mold of "drinking Joy from the breast of
Nature."

All the small choral groups performed well enough, especially the Ugandans
and Cubans (while the Swedes showed technical excellence) but when added
to the Festival Chorus, they diluted, rather than enhanced the sound --
at least to these ears (which happen to be the only ones I can use).

And now, a plea to management:  Please show zero tolerance to FLASH
photography in the concert hall during performance, and find the culprit(s)
who play with the house lights also during the concert.  How about having
those lights up or down, but not up-and-down while the musicians are
performing and the audience listening? Or coordinate the flash-poppers so
that a steady light may be provided.

===================================

Tomorrow, Quasthoff is "going back to his roots" by singing Gershwin, Kern
and Rogers.  He says Broadway and jazz were the first music he ever sang...
to himself and as a young man working as a radio DJ.  The Sunday concert
is a tribute to Sinatra but what I heard at the first rehearsal today was
*better* than Sinatra, and I don't mean just a better voice.  The durned
thing was more idiomatically American than the great Italian-American could
ever make it.  No kidding.  An astonishing thing; wait until you hear it!

Is he going to do a cross-over, and make "Ciao, Tommy!"? His answer:  "No,
no, no, no, no.  Never!  No.  I am doing this for the fun of it and because
I love Frank Sinatra and jazz, but I am not a pop musician and never will
be."

 [TQ quoted in a Register-Guard interview by Fred Crafts]

   "Singing has a lot to do with talent.  You have it or you don't.  I
   have, from the early years on, the ability -- the imagination -- of
   seeing pictures during singing.  There are things in music you cannot
   learn.

   "For me, the most important thing is to touch people.  If this happens,
   I am very happy.  This is the thing why we are making music -- to
   touch people, to move people, to surprise people.

   "The beauty of the voice is not enough.  I am not a `beauty singer.'
   For me, it's very important to use colors, to use the voice as a
   painter."

 [About singing opera on stage]

   "I am a disabled person.  If the press thinks this is the main,
   important thing, theen they have a a problem.  I have no problem with
   it because I am first a human being, second, I am disabled.

   "As an artist, I am not a disabled person who sings.  I am an artist
   who is disabled.  This is a big difference for me.  I am not living
   a disabled life.  I live a complete, normal artist's life.  Not a
   normal life but a normal artist's life.  If you ask the musicians
   who are playing withy me, they absolutely don't care about these
   things.  They like me as a human being."

 [They sure do.]

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