A present? For me? Really?

This was a busy musical weekend in Portland. I have now lived here for about five years but am sometimes still astounded by the rich variety and high quality of the musical life in this city. It seems like it never stops. We are so lucky.

I attended the PSU Symphony Orchestra's concert at Kaul Auditorium, Reed College, yesterday afternoon. As I sauntered around the lobby I spotted conductor Ken Selden approaching me, his hand stretched out in greeting. "I have a present for you today!" he said, gleefully. "As we had some flexibility in the programming and I knew you would be here, I have included some Elgar for you!" Is this a sweet man, or what? The center-piece of the concert was a performance of Concierto de Aranjuez with Cuban guitarist Manuel Barrueco. I happen to know this work extremely well and am very fond of it, so my over-riding feeling when attending a live performance of it is usually along the lines "Please don't mess up one of my favourite pieces!" Yesterday I had no such concerns. Maestro Barrueco is a consummate artist and his performance thrilled me. Yes, actually thrilled me. I could have wished for larger orchestral forces but the playing was crisp and had all the right feel to it. The frighteningly exposed cor anglais solo in the second movement was played with aplomb. I chatted with Maestro Barrueco during the intermission and was immediately struck by what a warm and charming man he is (that's us in the picture). I hope he comes back to Portland very soon. Oh, the Elgar piece? The Serenade in E minor. Played beautifully.

Bravo, PSU Symphony and two thumbs up and my thanks to Maestro Selden.

Oh, while at Kaul, I bumped into David Hattner, conductor of the Portland Youth Philharmonic. His band is rehearsing like crazy for their Winter Concert on March 13th. This will include a performance of Shostakovitch's Symphony Number 5. David Hattner and I are going to get together sometime in the next week or two to chat about it and I shall report to you. For me, this is one of a small handful of 'absolutely-must-be-there' concerts of the year.

L'Enfant et les Sortilèges

Until very recently I had no idea that Ravel had written any opera. Actually, I remained in ignorance of this until someone from Portland Opera emailed me with a query about L'Enfant et le Sortilèges. A Ravel opera? How come I have never heard of it and why is it not performed frequently enough that at least I am familiar with its title? At that point I asked my friend Mr Google what he could tell me and I was directed to an article on Wikipedia. There I found all the usual information about the piece, but it was not until I reached the paragraph dealing with orchestration and looked at the list of instruments required for a performance of this work, that the puzzle's solution revealed itself. The work calls for the employment of a cheese-grater! (don't believe me? Check the article...). Ah, of course! No wonder performances of this opera are less frequent than, say, La Bohème. When Ravel wrote this opera in 1925, Paris was home to a number of Europe's premier cheese-grater virtuosi, but, over the last 85 years their number has dwindled to a point their very existence is more threatened than that of the spotted owl. A significant part of the reason for this is the paucity of really fine instruments available for performance. The master cheese-grater maker was, of course, Antonio Formaggio (Cremona 1864-1932). Numerous examples of his fine workmanship were lost to the musical world when they were melted down to make helmets for French soldiers in World War II and few examples remain. (All remaining instruments bear names. The Bel Paese grater remains in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It is said that it has never been played.) From time to time efforts have been made to ascertain what process resulted in the distinctive timbre of Formaggio's finest graters. For many years it was thought that he had a secret recipe for the tin plating with which the instruments were finished but that is now thought not to have been the case. German scientists recently posited that the ore from which the body of the instrument was made had been formed during the last ice age, and that had led to a particularly resonating material. This has still not been confirmed. Nevertheless, Formaggio's late-period graters remain the gold standard by which all others are judged.

Could it be that Portland Opera, always at the forefront of what is truly important in opera, is to be responsible for a re-blooming of an almost-lost art? I can't wait to find out! I will report to you, gentle readers, when it is finally announced who is to play this marvellous and neglected instrument in our production. I wonder whether Christopher Mattaliano realises that Operaman is in fact not only a student of graterie, but one of the few practitioners of the art to be found on the West coast of the USA.....

Search for the Tanhelm

Saturday night found me at the Clinton Street Theater for the Opera Theater Oregon production of Rheingold. I can be brief about the experience: it was a hoot! The show was preceded by a session of Leitmotif Bingo (well, of course it was!) which was an inspired way of getting the audience into the swing of things. The show itself is very clever, very funny and quite obviously the result of countless hours of hard work and a detailed knowledge of Wagner's opera. I don't have room here to mention everyone but I do need to give a special shout-out to Michael Miersma who was Larry Loomin' Large (Alberich in the original). I have been watching Miersma for a couple of years now and it seems like, quite suddenly, he has found his voice and stage personality. There were a number of fine performances in this Rheingold but when Miersma was on stage he was what we watched and his baritone has developed a richness that bodes very well for his future.

A friend of mine at Portland Opera, who wishes to remain nameless, spoke to me on the telephone just now. She told me she had attended with four friends, two of whom had never been to any kind of opera. They all had a great time, apparently. The two newbies were impressed enough they think they might want to go to other productions. But here was the interesting thing: the two who know opera, left the show really wanting to go to see a traditional performance of Rheingold. I had a similar experience, except that I left really wanting to see re-runs of Baywatch. Anyway, she said they had an "awesome evening - and it didn't even include alcohol!" Mine did, but we can gloss over that.

There are three more performances at the Clinton Theater on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday of this week. Go. You won't regret it. And do be there in time for the Leitmotif Bingo!

All of which provides the perfect segue for this. Yes, I know you all have seen it a million times. So what? It's Monday. Watch it again and laugh!

Have a happy and productive week and check back for my mid-week round-up on Thursday.