It’s a quiet Saturday morning and I’m heading out to Bard College soon to spend the day exploring “Berg and His World”.  The Austrian composer Alban Berg is the subject of the 21st annual Bard Music Festival, which our company (21C Media Group) promotes as part of Bard’s SummerScape festival.  True to form, Leon Botstein will conduct a rarely performed work on this evening’s program:  Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln, the so-called Apocalypse oratorio.  Yesterday, I told Gramophone’s editor in chief, James Jolly, about my weekend plans, and his reply made me chuckle: “Rather wonderful music, whatever the hell it's all about” (hope you don’t mind me using that one James!).  I’m really looking forward to it, having no small weakness for Bergman’s Seventh Seal and other end-of-the-world-inspired art.

Before taking off, though, I wanted to set down a few lines about the past week’s concerts, in particular three one-hour late-night events at the Stanley H Kaplan Penthouse in New York City – part of Lincoln Center’s increasingly adventurous Mostly Mozart festival.  This intimate venue (perhaps 125 seats) is set up in lounge style; with candlelight illuminating the glass enclosed space (beautiful West Side Manhattan views on two sides), a glass of wine ready for each attendee as they arrive, and audience members seated at cocktail tables. I’ve long had issue with the inattention to lighting and atmosphere that afflicts so many classical concerts, so these Kaplan events, which bring listeners so close to the action, are always a special treat. 

First on my docket was one Friday concert in a six-program series “Bach and Polyphonies”, curated by the festival’s artist-in-residence, Pierre Laurent-Aimard (also a client of our company).  Besides always enjoying the profound artistry of this brilliant French pianist, I chose to hear this particular program because of my recent obsession with Ligeti’s Horn Trio, surely one of the greatest chamber masterpieces of the late 20th century (the strange, Salsa-beat second movement has been particularly sticky in my ears: sample this YouTube clip ).  I didn’t always hear the things that Aimard suggested we listen for, but it didn’t detract from the visceral thrill of hearing this explosively ingenious work at close range.

On Wednesday I spent most of the day with the charming and abundantly talented Ebène Quartet, whom I work with through my company’s ongoing relationship with EMI/Virgin Classics. They were in the middle of a short tour of American music festivals, and I’ve been a huge fan of theirs since we first promoted their debut album of three French quartets (the album, featuring music by Debussy, Ravel and Fauré, was voted the 2009 Gramophone Record of the Year).  I met them downtown at the studios of WNYC radio, where they would be performing live on the the popular “Soundcheck”. One goal of the appearance was to do some advance promotion for their new album, “Fiction”, which is coming out in Europe this fall and in the US in March 2011, when the guys return to the States for a big tour. The name of the album comes from the opening track, the Greek folk song Misirlou, which was transformed into a surf-rock classic by guitarist Dick Dale, and was made famous again when it was used in the film Pulp Fiction. In any case, an advance copy of the new album has been in my CD player for two weeks now, and it’s quickly become one of my favorite CDs.  Very few classical artists have a real feel for popular and crossover material, but the Ebènes are an obvious and happy exception. You can sample two songs that appear on the album by visiting the station’s website and hearing their performances, which were done live while on air at WNYC.

To get to the studio early Wednesday afternoon, the guys had to drive down from Saratoga, in upstate New York, that morning – a four-hour drive. To my amazement, they arrived perfectly on time – no small achievement given the insanity of Manhattan traffic. They had performed the night before at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, after which they had apparently attended a concert by glam-rock legends KISS (no kidding!). The four young Frenchmen apparently sat in the VIP section and seemed to have a great time of it (cellist Raphaël Merlin described the group as “strangely American” – an understatement!). After the “Soundcheck” appearance, Ebène violist Mathieu Herzog got behind the wheel of an SUV and drove the guys (and me) uptown to the Lincoln Center area. They were staying at the Empire Hotel, across the street from Lincoln Center and a few blocks from my own apartment, where I often work. Our progress was stopped completely by a jam at West 65th Street, where a cluster of satellite TV trucks, and a red carpet surrounded by hundreds of screaming young girls, was on hand for the release of a movie starring the Jonas Brothers. The whole thing was fairly surreal, but it effectively illustrated a concept familiar to city natives: “Only in New York!”

The Ebène’s late night concert, featuring a Mozart divertimento and Beethoven’s Opus 131 Quartet, was thrilling, given a deservedly enthusiastic review by the chief critic of the New York Times. 

The guys admitted afterwards to struggling with the venue’s dry acoustic, and Merlin’s bow came apart just as the Beethoven was coming to an end, but the audience was enraptured and gave a rousing ovation.

Finally, on Thursday night, I joined my colleague Philip Wilder for a recital by Jeremy Denk (another client), who played two powerful piano sonatas: Liszt’s Dante Sonata and Beethoven’s Opus 111. Denk, who is increasingly regarded as one of the wittiest bloggers about music – visit his website for a taste of it – provided illuminating commentary (in lieu of written program notes – he confessed to the crowd – that he had failed to deliver) before the show, joking that many people who first heard what he intended to play thought he was a touch mad with such a pairing (characteristically flashy Liszt, with especially mystical Beethoven). But he pointed out an important similarity in the works: a “dark night of the soul” quality that united them in spirit. Denk’s description of the famous “dance” section in the Op 111 as a sort of “chaotic joy” (or words to that effect) only heightened my appreciation for his skill in bringing the entire work to life.  Listening to his equally impressive Liszt performance, I wondered if Stravinsky had lifted a section of the Dante for the “Daybreak” in his Firebird ballet. Over and over again throughout the performances I marveled at the intensity of Denk’s concentration: the expression on his face suggested an artist who had literally disappeared into the music he was performing, both churning in its tumult, and basking in its light.