Swan Lake

I meant to write about this much earlier, but I've only found time now. A few weeks ago, I saw the American Ballet Theatre do a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake at the Civic Opera House. It was my second ever ballet (saw the Joffrey do Stravinsky's Rite of Spring last year, which was amazing). Unsurprisingly, the ballet was a completely different experience to watch on stage, instead of merely listening to the music.

Lots of swans

I have a slight history with the ballet in that the All-State Orchestra that I was in the sophomore year of high school played the suite. The fourth movement of the suite is the Pas d'action, the scene in which Siegfried falls in love with the half-swan Odette. It is a slow scene with a large violin solo. Near the end of the scene, the violin and the cello have solos together, and the intention is that each voice is playing one of the leads. It is a very poignant scene just from the music alone. At the time, I practiced that solo like crazy (I can still play the entire thing from memory). Ultimately, it didn't work out for me in the audition and I didn't get the solo or the first chair position.

The point is, I already love this scene. But having seen it acted out by world-class dancers was a complete revelation for me. The scene is so tender, esp. at the end when the violin and the cello are both going and the two lovers are draped all over each other.

As far as the actual performance itself, the dancing looked really good to me. I especially enjoyed the third act when different countries made their "pitch" for presenting a bride to the prince. Each dance number was pretty extravagant. The instrumental play was actually pretty poor. The Neapolitan Dance features a huge trumpet solo, and the one I heard was really subpar for the level of the performance.

I'm still really glad I got to see one of my favorite "musical" ballets. As an orchestral musician, I sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that the beautiful ballet music I play is just music; instead, it is oftentimes just artistic support for the main show of the ballet dancing. I will have a little more context for the next time I play Swan Lake. I'm also excited to see the other two big Tchaikovsky ballets, Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty, at some point as well.

Itzhak and Yo-Yo

I just listened to the new album of Mendelssohn Piano Trios by Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and Emanuel Ax. I got it mostly out of curiosity - I saw the album at the University Bookstore and was actually surprised to see Itzhak is still putting out recordings. His last few albums have mostly been re-issues (see here or here. The last album of his that I can remember that actually has new material is a Mozart one in which he plays Mozart 3 and then conducts the Jupiter symphony with the BPO (note that is off the top of my head - I could definitely be wrong about this). That one, to put it mildly, may not have seen Itzhak in the best light.

One of the three is not like the other

Not only was I surprised to see Itzhak recording again, but it was equally pleasantly surprising to see him paired with Yo-Yo. Since I really love the first Mendelssohn Trio (and the second is not so bad either), I really wanted to see how this would compare with my favorite recording (currently the Heifetz-Piatigorsky-Rubinstein one).

Let me first start by saying the general atmosphere that the three establish is very restrained and prohibitive. The three never really hit highs or lows, but instead try to deliver an understated performance. Compared with the firecracker Heifetz-Piatigorsky-Rubinstein, this one is a lot slower and less energetic. These are not necessarily bad things. In the second theme of the first movement of the first Trio for instance, I really feel like I get time to savor the beautiful melody. I also really like that Perlman is not in a hurry. That's not to say that he was slow or slowing down, but it did seem like he was consistently behind the beat when he wanted to be; the effect is nice and in stark contrast to everything Heifetz ever played. Further, the piece is kind of melancholy anyway, and I think the strategy taken by the three performers is actually justified.

Yo-Yo is fantastic. His openness and warmth of sound are made for these pieces. Itzhak doesn't have quite the bright and powerful tone that he used to, but he does manage to keep up. I must admit that I very rarely notice the pianist in piano trios, but Ax seems to do all the right things. Overall, I like the recording very much, but it didn't blow me away. The best way to describe my reaction is that it surpassed my low expectations. Why low? Because I have seen Itzhak Perlman perform live recently, and I have seen the debilitation in his technique and sound. Mendelssohn's Trios are actually perfect for him at this point because they don't require technical fingerboard gymnastics, and the climaxes are almost always in unison with the cello part.

This leads (finally) to the main point of the post. We were totally robbed of Itzhak and Yo-Yo. These two should have found each other 30 years ago and recorded the entire catalog of Piano Trios and other chamber music with each other. They have similar styles - big booming voices with an eye toward the dramatic while staying more or less conventional. Given the right pieces (such as the Archduke Trio or the Ravel Trio, just to name a few), these two would have built on each other and transcended the genre.

Instead, because of record label contracts (Itzhak was an EMI guy for most of his career, Yo-Yo has been with some form of Sony for his whole career), these guys only hooked up one previous time, and that was only possible because it was on Barenboim's label. (PS. I loved that recording. Itzhak did some quirky stuff in the Mendelssohn because it was a live performance, and Itzhak and Yo-Yo more or less fought each other for the title of "biggest sound produced" in the first movement of the Brahms Double). It took this long for Itzhak (now in his mid-60's) to finally team up with Yo-Yo.

Now, admittedly, they started teaming up in the mainstream earlier this decade, with the 2000 Oscars performance and more recently the Obamauguration. But even then Itzhak was losing his fastball. Looking back, his career peaked in the 80's (see: the first Brahms recording with Giulini, or the Beethoven Sonatas set he did with Ashkenazy). Yo-Yo more or less peaked in the 90's, but he has sustained a lot of his tone and skills.

What's up with the white turtlenecks?

This also brings me to a huge what-if for me. The Tchaikovsky Piano Trio recording with Perlman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Lynn Harrell is one of my five favorite music albums of all time. It goes on the desert island, and I don't even know what goes with it as of right now. I just know it's there. The music is so passionate and the three do such a perfect job of give and take. It is also Itzhak at his absolute apex, when he could make a climax sound like a mountain crashing in on itself. The recording was made in the early 80's. I know Yo-Yo was a little younger then, but wouldn't he have at least matched Harrell's performance?

The same goes for Yo-Yo. He recorded quite a bit of chamber music with Isaac Stern when Isaac was nearing the end of his career. In those recordings, Isaac was clearly a step below his prime, as he often played out of tune and had a very muted sound with little vibrato.

I'm happy that they are playing together now. However, I can't shake this feeling that we could have had a treasure trove of chamber recordings with the greatest violinist and cellist of the past 50 years consistently teaming up. Imagine them doing the Beethoven Piano Trios with Ashkenazy, or the Trout, or the Ravel duo. Sadly, this will have to be filed under one of the better musical what-ifs: what if Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma had been under the same record label?

CMSO Firebird Concert

Chicago Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra played the "Fantasy" yesterday:

Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Pierne: Concertstück for Harp and Orchestra
Nuiko Wadden, Harp
Mussorgsky: Prelude, Khovantchina
Stravinsky: Firebird Suite

I think Russ is really stretching with some of these concert themes, but "Fantasy" is as good as any for this concert. The Bach and Stravinsky were in Fantasia movies, and the Mussorgsky and Pierne are picturesque, soundtrack-type pieces that fit in well.

I'll go in order. The Bach was nearly a disaster, as we just didn't have enough time to rehearse it. The fugue section is actually pretty difficult technically and really difficult in a large ensemble.I think we played it well, and we did it without resorting to stereotypes (i.e. it was not overdramatic).

The Pierne was a pleasant surprise. I think it sounded a little too much like movie music, but it was still very enjoyable. Harp soloist was very good and impressive. From my viewpoint, I could actually see her hands shaking before starting off some passages. Once she started playing, though, her movements were natural and gorgeous. I just found out that she is the harpist in the Janus Trio, which I feel like I've heard of before.

Ruiko Wadden, Harp

The Mussorgsky is one of those pieces with an absolutely sublime melody line, something that you could get lost in for minutes at a time. Our oboist absolutely nailed the solo. I will need to explore the opera a little bit more, if only just for that melody line. By the way, I don't know what it is with me and the Russians. I can think of 5 or 6 melodies off the top of my head by Russian composers that make me pull a J.D. from Scrubs. There's the Borodin Polovtsian Dances. The line that builds and eventually climaxes in the last movement of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique. The second theme in the first movement of Pathetique. The slow movement of the second Prokofiev concerto. The second theme of the first mvt of the Khachaturian concerto. The slow movement of Tchakovsky 5. All of Scheherazade. I guess my point is, I'm easily drawn into Russian melodies.

The Stravinsky was a real challenge. I've become a pretty fast learner of music, but it took me several tries at the Stravinsky before I could even develop a roadmap in my head, and even then the notes were still hard. I ended up needing to fake a few passages (first movement, just before the start of the Princess Dance, and the end of the Infernal Dance. However, once we had played and rehearsed it a few times, the piece actually started to make sense.

I actually have a pretty long history with the Firebird suite. Back in 10th grade, my youth orchestra had a series of Russian-heavy concerts (something like Shostakovich 5, Polovtsian Dances, Russian Festival Overture, and the Finale of Firebird). In my 10th grade English class, I did a big report about 20th century Russian composition. It was painfully basic stuff (i.e. look! Stravinsky's using percussive sounds!), but hey, I didn't (and still don't) know anything about music theory. However, it confirmed my love of classical music. During that time, there were a few recordings that I listened to obsessively. One of them was Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra doing the Firebird Suite. I'll talk about the other recordings later. The point is, in 10th grade, I never thought I would get the opportunity to try such a complex and substantive piece like Firebird. On Sunday, I got to be part of an experience that actually transformed the piece for me.

I listened to Firebird roughly 3,764 times in 10th grade

Our performance completely exceeded my expectations. The Infernal Dance was fast and exciting. The solos were absolutely gorgeous in the Princess Dance. The first movement actually moved with purpose and didn't drag. And the Finale was actually quite intense, one of the better experiences I've taken part in.

Brahms 1 is next.

Individual Jump Ball Performance

Thanks to play-by-play data from Basketball Geek, I've been messing around with the game logs for the three seasons from 2006-2009.

One of the things I've always been fascinated with is the jump ball. To my eyes, it obviously takes height and athleticism, but there is also the factor of tipping it into the right place. I remember watching a Spurs game from a few years ago (sorry, tried looking for the specific play but couldn't find it) in which Tim Duncan won the opening tip by slapping it hard to Manu Ginobili, who gathered the ball and without breaking stride made a nearly uncontested layup. That play was probably drawn up by the Spurs because they knew they had the advantage in the jump ball.

First, some basics about the jump ball. There is one to start off every game to determine the initial possession. The winner of that jump ball will also start with possession in the 4th quarter, while the loser gets possession in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. Thus, the opening jump ball is really not that crucial to the game. A jump ball can also occur during the flow of the game, most often in the event of a tie-up for possession of the ball. A complete list of ways to initiate a jump ball can be found here.

Jump balls are also used to start each overtime period. This is a potentially huge advantage as there are very few possessions in the overtime period as it is, and winning the jumpball guarantees you will have at least as many possessions as your opponent. I may look at overtime jump ball stats and their correlation to winning games in the future.

So, are some players better at jump balls than others? I looked across the three seasons from 2006-2009 and kept track of each jump ball and determined the winner by seeing who ended up with possession. My criteria was that a player's stats were only counted if, during the season, the player attempted at least 15 jump balls. This weeds out most of the smaller players who only do jump balls when they are part of a tie-up. I then looked at the average attempts per season and calculated their jump ball win percentage.

The chart has the average attempts on the x-axis and the win % on the y-axis. The best players for jump balls are the ones furthest up and furthest right. Although there is a slight positive trend (which tells us that NBA teams are, for the most part, picking the right players to do the jump balls), the results are pretty scattered.

The individual results are also not that surprising. Most people would probably have guessed that Dwight Howard is one of the most effective players at the jump ball. The "winners" of this survey are Howard, Duncan, Shaq, and Samuel Dalembert.

Also, it's interesting to see how height isn't necessarily the most important trait. In fact, although I have not done this analysis, it looks like rebound rate would be a good proxy for jump ball effectiveness. All the high % players are ones that are usually associated with good rebounding skills and the effort/desire to play in the low block. The ones that are low % but also made many attempts (Yao Ming, Mehmet Okur, Eddy Curry, etc.) are tall players but not necessarily athletic players.

However, height does matter in that it seems to serve as kind of a threshold stat. The three worst players in this survey are Kevin Love (ouch), David Lee, and Udonis Haslem. All three are undersized big men that had to play significant stretches as the lone big man (Love when Jefferson went down in 2009, Lee pretty much all the time, Haslem after Shaq was traded from the Heat). Even though all three players are effective rebounders, it looks like those skills don't really help in their case as they do not meet a basic level of height.

Finally, I just want to mention that this is a relatively small sample size, as even in the best case (say, for Dwight Howard), we still only have about 250 attempts over the three-year period. Statistical fluctuations can and do occur. The next step is to see if winning the jump ball in overtime actually leads to an increased probability of winning the game.

Tosca at the Lyric

I saw the Lyric Opera do Puccini's Tosca last Friday night. It was the first time seeing a live opera for me. We had pretty good seats, on the third floor (not too far, but definitely far enough that opera glasses would've helped). Overall a pretty good experience, but I think it came in slightly under my expectations.

Tosca is a great first opera to see. It has an intriguing but typical story line (crazy woman driven to the edge for love, kills bad guy, everyone dies in the end). The sets were splendid - I really liked the church setting for the first act. Music is solidly Puccini.

Yep, she murders...I know, crazy!

After the first act, I was actually hyper. It was very exciting, hearing the voices in person, and seeing the acting definitely makes a difference. The second act really slows it down as most of the act is a dialogue between Tosca and Scarpia (until she kills him in the end, of course). The final act is brief - I actually wanted more.

In the end, I think part of my underwhelming experience is because I don't really have a connection to the music. Puccini is famous for the most well-known arias, such as Nessun Dorma and O mio babbino caro. There isn't really a signature aria in this opera. The two times I was most engaged were in the final act when Cavaradossi sings his farewell to Tosca and the end of the first act when Scarpia is plotting while the church congregation gathers. None of those really qualify as a "chill" moment for me.

As cheesy as this sounds, the closest I came to the "chill" moment is when I realized during the end of the first act that Tosca is the opera in the background when James Bond is kicking ass in Quantum of Solace. That movie might actually over-dramatize Tosca, although I still think it's cool that I made the connection.

I will definitely try to make a few more Lyric productions. They still have Figaro on their schedule for this year and already announced Carmen, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Lohengrin (among others) for next year.

Emanuel Ax plays Chopin, Schumann

Saw Emanuel Ax in recital on Sunday. The program had a Fantasy theme, with the Chopin Polonaise-Fantasy in A-flat Major, some Chopin Mazurkas, the Chopin Andante spianato and Grande polonaise brilliante, the Schumann Fantasiestucke, and the Schumann Fantasy in C. Overall, it was a great experience considering I didn't know any of the pieces.

First of all, Ax is a lot older than I would have thought. That didn't stop him from starting with tremendous energy in the Polonaise-Fantasy. I don't know too much about pianists, but it was refreshing to see someone that just played the music and didn't try to make their movements/actions the focal point. There was no humming from Ax or excessive orgasm-type facial gestures. He was a solid player and created the right atmosphere for each piece. He is especially good at something that violinists value in playing Bach - he is able to borrow and make up time. For example, if he slows down a little in the beginning of a passage, he makes up for it later in the passage.

Ax got one of the louder and longer standing ovations I've ever seen from a Chicago audience. He came back onstage 4 times, with the fourth leading to an encore. My friend told me the encore was definitely Chopin, but I have no idea what it could have been (maybe a Nocturne?). Overall, a good experience and outside my usual comfort zone for classical music.

My fight with the pavement

I had a little accident yesterday while biking home from grocery shopping. I was really quite stupid. It was kind of the perfect storm that led to my first biking accident since maybe I was seven.

First of all, I had a lot in my backpack (12-pack of beer, half-gallon of soy milk, etc.), so I was already carrying more momentum than usual. As I crossed the intersection (Washington and Canal), the light turned green. I sped up slightly, then noticed the curb wasn't graduated (i.e. it was a sudden curb, and quite high). I decided hitting the curb straight on wasn't very appealing, but stopping wasn't so appealing either. I hit the front brake of the bike rather suddenly, lost balance as the bike basically flipped over, and faceplanted on the street.

My immediate reaction was to get up and keep going. Then I noticed drops of blood just running down onto the ground. A homeless guy came over and offered some tissues. I wiped off my face, saw the thing get soaked, and realized I was FUCKED.

Luckily, someone stopped by and called and ambulance for me. He was really good at convincing me how serious the injury was. I'm really quite stubborn, and if it weren't for him, I probably would've tried to bike away. He even gave me a bottle of water.

On the way to Northwestern Hospital, the paramedic tried making small talk with me to make sure I hadn't knocked something loose in my head. We talked about my job, and my current b-school education, and he decided I was just the person to help him with his small business. It's actually really quite interesting...maybe a post for another time.

After waiting in the ER forever (I checked in around 3:30 pm and left around 9 pm), I got good news from the docs. No structural damage, no stitches needed. Basically, I'm in for a ton of swelling, and the cuts might scar. I was actually supposed to start full-time at CashNetUSA today, but that's been delayed for a few days. Fingers crossed...