[Dixielandjazz] The Show Must Go On

[Stephen G Barbone]

Not OKOM but an interesting view of how professional musicians react  
in the face of unplanned events. Note how similar "Frankenstein" is to  
something Spike Jones would do. Who said classical musicians were  
humorless? Below is excerpted for brevity:

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband
April 6, 2009 - NY TIMES - by Anthony Tommasini
Is That in Your Job Description, Maestro?

That David Robertson conducted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra at  
Carnegie Hall on Saturday night in the most transparent and riveting  
account of Sibelius’s elusive Fifth Symphony in memory would have been  
momentous enough.
But for making news in the staid world of classical music, nothing  
topped Mr. Robertson’s unplanned New York debut as a singer during the  
symphony’s concert on Friday night at Zankel Hall, the first of two  
programs during this visit.

Stormy weather in the New York area on Friday afternoon delayed  
flights into La Guardia Airport for hours. Mr. Robertson and the St.  
Louis musicians did not touch down in New York until 6:08 p.m., a  
little more than two hours before the concert was to begin.

There was no time to check into the hotel, so most of the musicians  
played in street clothes. Not only that, H K Gruber, the Austrian  
composer, conductor and self-described chansonnier who was to perform  
the vocal solo of his own work, “Frankenstein!!,” the major work on  
the program, never made it.

Mr. Robertson, who had conducted this score many times but had never  
sung the vocal part, did some cramming backstage and performed the  
solo. Ward Stare, the orchestra’s able young resident conductor, took  
Mr. Robertson’s place on the podium.

“Frankenstein!!,” Mr. Gruber’s most popular piece, has been performed  
more than 1,000 times, and he has made his singing of the vocal part a  
specialty. In this 30-minute stylistically eclectic work — a heady  
amalgam of cabaret, modern music idioms and nursery school ditties —  
Mr. Gruber sets a collection of subversive contemporary children’s  
rhymes by H. C. Artmann, a Viennese writer. With gleeful impishness,  
the texts evoke fairy-tale monsters, turn bats into children’s  
playmates, deconstruct heroes like Superman and John Wayne, and put a  
homoerotic spin on Batman and Robin.

Mr. Gruber intended for the texts to be delivered in a kind of speech- 
song, complete with nasal squawks and patter. You do not need a proper  
singing voice to perform the part, but you do have to be uninhibited.  
Mr. Robertson’s performance was a tour de force of uninhibition.

He spouted the words, performed in English translation, with crisp  
diction and rhythmic bite. When appropriate, he bent phrases with  
poignant sing-song sweetness. At times he was demonically intense,  
squeaking phrases like “That’s how the mi-ma-monsterlet/goes dancing  
through our house.” Yet he took the piece seriously, letting the humor  
take care of itself, which is Mr. Gruber’s way of performing it as  
well. And Mr. Robertson also deftly played the occasional bits for  
kazoo and slide whistles, never breaking stride.

Under Mr. Stare the musicians performed this circus of a score, which  
has parts for toy instruments, household items (paper bags that get  
blown up and popped) and hose pipes. More than fun, the piece touches  
the dark side of childhood fantasy during ethereal passages, wrong- 
note chorales and bursts of fearsomely pummeling rhythms.

The humorous program began with Mr. Robertson’s droll conducting of “A  
Musical Joke,” Mozart’s intentionally clunky and satirical  
minisymphony. There were also a nimble performance of Hindemith’s  
rollicking overture to “Neues vom Tage” (“News of the Day”) and a  
stylish account of excerpts from Satie’s insouciant 1924 ballet  
“Relâche” and the 10-minute score “Cinéma,” the music Satie wrote as a  
bridge between the ballet’s two acts, played here, as originally  
intended, while René Clair’s Dadaist film “Entr’acte” was screened.