Did you ever wonder why doctors think it’s a good idea for a bunch of sick people to wait together for their exams in a small, overheated, unventilated room?  Or why drugstores invariably put the cough medications in the aisle where people are waiting to pick up their prescriptions?  No?  Well, I do.  Think of these things, I mean.

But, I  digress and I’m late checking in today.   Here’s a new rule for those of you with frontpage posting ability.  If you don’t see something from me by noon Eastern, feel free to jump in there and mix and stir.  If you don’t have frontpage posting rights, let me know and I’ll sign you up.

Okay, here’s some exciting news.  Marvin Rosen is going to be airing another piece from last year’s Sequenza21 concert on his Classical Discoveries program.  On Wednesday, Marvin will be playing David Toub’s Objects in observance of WPRB’s first membership fund drive which is this entire week.  That, I guess, makes David the Andrea Bocelli of WPRB.

Marvin is scheduled to be airing Objects during the latter part of the 7:00 o’clock hour but the time may be slightly changed if the begging gets too exciting.

And if you happen to be near Indiana University on Thursday or Friday night this week don’t miss  the collegiate premiere performance in concert of the chamber opera Ainadamar or Fountain of Tears by Osvaldo Golijov.  Our amiga Carmen Helena Téllez, director of the IU Jacobs School’s Latin American Music Center (LAMC), and of the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, will conduct the production which will take place on Oct. 11 at 8 p.m. in Auer Hall, with a repeat performance on Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. The performances are free and open to the public. 

Turning 70 is a big deal for most people, and especially so for Philip Glass, whose birthday is being celebrated worldwide big time. He’s just been feted in New York by Music At The Anthology (MATA), and Groningen, Holland, is putting on a Glass Festival.  The composer and The Philip Glass Ensemble performed his massive compendium of minimalist moves, Music in 12 Parts (1971-74), this summer in the Hague and the San Francisco Bay Area pays its homage with the world premiere of his SF Opera commission, Appomattox, this coming Friday, October 5.  

Glass is such a big name, and  pervasive influence–I caught a chord progression in a dance mix lifted straight from him in a bar–that it’s almost hard to see the trees for the forest.  But Glass emerged clearly from that penumbral place in Philip Glass: An Evening of Chamber Music, which kicked off San Francisco Performances’ season at Herbst Theatre on Friday night.  And all the frenzied Zeitgeist schtick on Van Ness– couples out on first — will there be a second?– dates, bobbing heads on cell phones, opera patrons running to catch the curtain, and monster traffic–was happily left outside. 

Glass, mike in hand, (“is it me, or the machine?) began by announcing a program change. He’d begin with 4 sections of the 5-part  Metamorphosis (1988), for solo piano, and not play either of the 2 Etudes (1994) planned. Metamorphosis, though it uses material from the composer’s score to Errol Morris’ doc The Thin Blue Line (1988), takes its title from the Kafka short story of the same name, for which Glass wrote scores for concurrent theater productions in Brazil and the Netherlands. And though the music stands proudly on its own, its lines and harmonies suggest the haunted atmosphere of Kafka’s tale–Gregor Samsa’s alienation from the world, and his dogged journey to a kind of transcendence. 

And Glass, sitting erect at his Steinway concert grand Model D, brought its many beauties to light–the poignant hesitations in #1 struck the heart, he made the massive floating harmonies in #2 acutely affecting through discreet pedalling, his attacks gave the bell-like paralllel chords of #3 power, and his command of color gave #4 its dramatic weight. Glass has spoken of his drifting sense of meter, and this was certainly apparent throughout; pianists like Alec Karis and Michael Riesman would surely have been metronomically regular. Metamorphosis has sometimes been described as Satie-like, though the equally private worlds of Schubert’s Impromptus and Brahms’ Intermezzi, come strongly to mind. My first encounter with Metamorphosis live was when Glass played the entire set ,as Molissa Fenley danced, at The Unitarian Church, which is a little more than a stone’s throw from Herbst.  But what sticks most is how the music the composer has written in the intervening years has colored his gestures when he plays this piece now.  

Next came the West Coast premiere of Songs and Poems for Cello, which Glass wrote for NY-based new music star Wendy Sutter of Bang On A Can fame, who plays a wide range of works from uptown –actually West Village people like Elliott Carter–to downtown composers. This is a thoroughly demanding piece, which Sutter played from memory, and which, with its sense of duende–Lorca”s term for anything  springing from deep within– seemed to evoke music as various as Bach, bits of the Suites for Cello (BWV 1007-12), and Brandenburg 6 (1721), as well as Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920-22), and Dohnanyi’s Cello Sonata (1899), which Martha Graham choreographed as Lamentation, without ever resembling any of  these.  Its seven sections–applause broke out in one–were mostly grave, intense, deeply sonorous, and completely lacking in easy effects.  Sutter negotiated its myriad technical–long sustained lines, double-stopping, pizzicati, and focus on different registers, usually sequentially–and expressive difficulties with almost superhuman ease.  

Four interconnecting episodes, or “Tissues”, from Godfrey Reggio’s third and final installment in the QATSI trilogy, Naqoyqatsi (2002), scored here for Glass, piano, Sutter, cello, and PGE percussionist Mick Rossi, followed. One was struck by the cello writing’s resemblance to that in Songs and Poems for Cello, the ultra soft sounds from the keyboard, and the floating sounds Rossi achieved on marimba and celeste. Naqoyqatsi never got the attention it deserved in its initial theatrical release, though Glass’ tour with his ensemble here last year–the film and score were performed by him and his PGE live at Davies–helped to right that wrong. 

Equally atmospheric were the last two offerings–The Orchard, a kind of slow sarabande from Glass’ score for JoAnne Akalitis’ 1991 theatre production of Genet’s The Screens, transcribed here for piano, cello, and percussion, from its original incarnation for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion and cello, and Closing, from Glass’ 1981 record debut on CBS, Glassworks, misunderstood as a pop/crossover piece then, and probably now as well, which Glass and his two fellow musicians played with both point and affection. “How can such a quiet person write such powerful music?” I said to my companion, who sat stock still, hands folded, throughout. Who knows?  But this concert proved beyond the slightest doubt that Glass has always been and remains a chamber musician intent on speaking to his listeners in the most intimate terms. Appomattox, which struck this listener as almost unbearably intimate, when he heard most of its first act at a Sitz-Probe 2 September, will likely fall into this exalted class

As those of you who come round here regularly know, I’m not a composer or musician but I am an experienced listener with limited patience for things that take too long to get to the point.  As a practical matter, that means that music I’ve never heard before has about 30 seconds to grab my attention.  I’ll listen to the whole thing but if doesn’t have that “Holy shit” thing happening in the first few bars, chances are the earth is never going to move for me.  Call it the Jerry Principle:  musical masterpieces announce their masterpiece-ness in 16 bars or less.  Go ahead, prove me wrong.

Most years you’re lucky to hear for the first time one or two compositions that grab you by the throat and won’t let go but in the last couple of weeks, I have encountered three such pieces.

First, there is a new large-scale cantata called Athanor by the 35-year-old French composer Guillaume Connesson, about whom I know little, except that he is obviously not a spectralist.  Based on an allegorical theme that somehow involves alchemy (the French are tedious with their obligatory intellectual pretentions) Athanor is relentlessly tonal and dramatic, recalling the heyday of the big bold orchestrators like Vaughn Williams and Prokofiev.  It is uncool to mention Carl Orff these days but Connesson has that kind of dramatic flair and wastes no time in making it apparent.  Supernova for orchestra, the second piece on the CD, confirms his gift for orchestral drama. 

The second piece is not that new but I just heard it for the first time–Kaja Saariho’s Graal théâtre, for violin & orchestra.  IMHO, as the kids say online, this the first absolute violin concerto masterwork to come along since Berg, or maybe Barber.  Gideon Kremer reaches deep into his considerable bag of tricks for every possible sound (and some that are clearly impossible). The rest of the CD is also marvelous–Dawn Upshaw sings the 5-song set Chateau de L’ame beautifully and Amers, for cello & electro-acoustic ensemble is a suitably gnarly antidote to L’ame’s sweetness.  But, Graal théâtre is one for the ages.

And while we are waving red flags, is there a single note of Osvaldo Golijov that is not destined for immortality?  His latest bid for the magic ring is Oceana, an impossibly beautiful setting of a poem by Pablo Neruda for guitars, percussions, chorus, and solo vocalists–in this case, the wonderful sambanista Luciana Souza.  Easy listening World Music, you say?  Phooey, I say.  Most composers would kill to have written Oceana or the other pieces on the CD–Tenebrae, a two-movement meditation on sadness written for the Kronos Quartet or the Three Songs written for Dawn Upshaw. 

Gramophone’s reviewer quotes an unnamed New York critic (was it you, Alex?) as saying that Golijov’s fans are just waiting for him to write a Very Important Work that will put him in the league with John Adams.  Speaking as someone who has hung on every note since my first spirtually-awakening discovery of The Dreams and Prayers of Issac the Blind, that wait was over a long time ago.