Silke's new shoes

Long time readers of this blog will recall that Silke's footwear has already made an appearance.  In fact that was the blog posting that I received the most email about: Silke discovers that she is Canadian .  Maybe you remember the photo of her old scruffy and decidedly non-Parisian runners.  Well, prepared to be shocked.  The dress code for l'Académie de musique specifies high heels for women for concerts.  Despite some protestations of mock horror, Silke seems not at all uncomfortable in them.

And those scruffy old runners?  Long gone now.  For daily use she has new runners (which she insisted on), and a pair of attractive casual shoes (which I insisted on).

General rehearsal at la Madeleine

I obviously can't take pictures at the concerts, so I took a few at the rehearsal last night at la Madeleine.

Silke is not hard to spot, at least in a close-up.  Her stand partner, the concert master and one of the professional musicians in the mix, is Nguyen Nguyen.  The French expression is to say that it is an orchestra of students "framed" (encadré) by professionals.  Here is his biography: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.academie-de-musique.com%2FJean-Pierre-Lacour .

Besides me, there were only a handful of people sitting in on the rehearsal.  (Because Silke is so young, I have a pass that allows me attend rehearsals with her.  But mostly I don't, unless they rehearse somewhere new where she hasn't been before, as last week, or it's something special, like a rehearsal in la Madeleine.)  Those listening last night were outnumbered by the statues of saints around the walls.  Perhaps they were listening as well.  Here, Jean d'Arc:

La Madeleine is extremely reverberant.  It is a much more lively sound than Notre Dame.  Actually Notre Dame is kind of dead acoustically I find.  The interior of Notre Dame is cross-shaped, with many deep alcoves and galleries on all sides and at several levels - lots of spaces for sound to get trapped and lost.  La Madeleine, in contrast is simply a huge shoebox - Silke says "ginormous", with only a few shallow alcoves.  Ginormous being a roof at a height of 43 metres, and a hall 108 metres long.  That is longer than a football field.  I think those are the exterior dimensions, but the interior is not much smaller, being one huge open space.  Stone walls, stone ceiling, stone floor, and no interior pillars, except right along the walls.  When then orchestra cuts off suddenly on a loud note, you can still hear it reverberate for the longest time.  It goes on . . . and on . . . and on . . . and if you listen closely, you can still hear it.  When they play with an audience, there will be more sound absorption in the hall, and it won't ring quite that long.  It is actually a hard setting to play, according to the professional musicians.  They prefer la Trinité, where the other two concerts will be held.  Now I know why at the rehearsal last week, Jean-Phillipe Sarcos, when working on a fugue passage, had the chorus sing almost entirely the just attack of each note, and then back right off.  In a smaller hall, that had a somewhat coarse, overly rhythmic effect.  But in la Madeleine, it gives it some clarity.  Actually in walking around la Madeleine during the rehearsal, I found the sound best, and clearest, about 2/3 of the way back in the church.  Close up, the contrast between the direct sound and the delayed reflections was unbalanced.

I recognize that poster

Spotted walking around Paris.

One week to go!

The first of three December concerts by l’académie de musique takes place a week today.  I attended a rehearsal last night, the first in some time that I have attended.  I went with Silke because it was at an unfamiliar location that she was unsure of finding on her own.  And then I stayed.  It was also, as it turned out, the first general rehearsal, with brass and percussion instruments (up to now the strings and woodwinds have rehearsed together), and with the chorus, two hundred strong, and with the soloists, Isabelle Cals, soprano, and Sebastien Obrecht, tenor, and with a number of professional instrumentalists filling out the orchestra where it needed a bit of reinforcement, for example in the violas, of whom there are never enough.

All I can say is, wow!  It’s going to be some concert.  The last time I heard a rehearsal, back in September or October, I wondered whether they would be able to fill the huge space of la Madeleine.  Now I think they are going to blow the roof off - figuratively!  I heard some violinists chatting afterwards, and one remarked that at previous rehearsals, those being strings alone or strings and woodwinds, she hadn’t been really enthusiastic about the music, but in the complete ensemble, it was awesome.  Silke said she had missed an entrance because she was listening so raptly to the soprano soloist, and the others laughed and admitted they had done the same at least once during the evening.

A word about the venues: La Madeleine is one of the most recognizable landmarks in Paris.  It forms one end of one “sight-line” in Paris - grand boulevards of straight alignment running between symmetrically opposing buildings or landmarks at either end, and featuring a large square or crossroads at the midpoint.  La Madeleine terminates rue Royale, facing along the length of rue Royale towards l’Assemblé Nationale, whose Corinthian columns it mirrors.  In the centre, equidistant between l’Assemblé Nationale and la Madeleine - place de la Concorde, with its “giant Egyptian pencil” as Jerome calls it, more commonly referred to as the Obelisk.  On the spot Marie Antoinette lost her head to the guillotine.  She was sadly unable to admire la Madeleine as we know it today while waiting for her head to be swiftly and efficiently separated from her shoulders, because its construction was ordered later by Napoleon, who had the pre-existing église de la Madeleine demolished - he generally being unfavorably disposed to churches - and replaced with a monument to his grand army.  In a typical twist of history, a later French monarchist government re-dedicated it as a church.  [ed. The long version of the history is, well, longer, as it was continually redesigned, constantly repurposed and repeatedly demolished in part over a period of 85 years before finally being completed as a church.]  It is however, to my eye, the most un-churchy of churches, being in conception a sort of neoclassical temple, like the Pantheon.  Silke still can't quite believe that she is actually going to be playing there.

photo by Shahee Ilyas, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license 2.0

For the two concerts the following week, they are playing at église de la Sainte-Trinité.  Notably, the funerals of both Berlioz and Bizet, who figure prominently on the concert program, were at la Trinité.    (Some famous composers had funerals at la Madeleine, for example Chopin.  But his music is not on the program of Musique Français en Fête.  Not because the French wouldn't happily appropriate him - he did after all live nearly half his life in Paris - but in consequence of the fact that he wasn't in the line of writing works for 300 singers and instrumentalists, being rather one to prefer 88 keys.)

photo credit user Mbzt wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

If you are wondering what kind of preparation to takes to play a concert like this, Silke figures that in the last 13 days alone, she has attended in total 25 hours of orchestra rehearsals.  (5 of which admittedly, were with another orchestra, as she plays in two.)  Some days she doesn't get home from an orchestra rehearsal until midnight, and then she has to be at school again the next morning at 9 or 9:30.

Salle de l’ancien Conservatoire

Yesterday we attended a remarkable concert.  The reason why this was such a remarkable concert is described here: http://ensemble-palaisroyal.com/evenement-musical-historique/ .  However there is no English translation of the page, so I will provide one:

The Palais Royal, for the opening of its season of Paris concerts, offers an exceptional musical event.  Directed by Jean-Philippe Sarcos, the Palais Royal interprets, on period instruments, the works of Beethoven and Mozart.  The setting for this concert is a salle de l’Ancien Conservatoire. 

La Salle de l’Ancien Conservatoire is a historical monument, erected between 1806 and 1811.  It is one of the first concert halls in history constructed for concerts rather than opera.

Since its opening, the acoustic quality due to the materials of wood and painted tiles have been hailed has exceptional, and the hall has been named the Stradivarius of concert halls. 

This location is laden with a illustrious musical past, comparable to no other: it is here that the symphonies of Beethoven were heard for the first time in France, here that the Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique was created, as well as a very large part of the French music of the 19th century.

Unknown by tourists and a number of Parisians, this hall has survived fires and demolitions and exists still today in its original condition. 

For the occasion, the original concert decor, preciously conserved in storage, has been remounted. 

On the concert program: three works performed [in this hall] in 1828 during the very first season of the orchestra of la Société des concerts du conservatoire : the Beethoven's Fifth symphony, Beethoven's concerto for piano-forte and orchestra no. 2 and the overture of Mozart's magic flute.

The concerto for piano-forte and orchestra no. 2 will be interpreted on an original piano-forte made by Franz Baumbach (Vienne, circa 1780).  This piano-forte, recently discovered in an attic and restored for the occasion, had not been played for over a century.  It finds itself for this concert together with a hall and repertoire of the same age."

-- Le Palais Royal

There is some possibility that this was the first orchestral concert in this hall in seventy years, although that couldn't be established for certain.  Why so little use?  Well, for one thing, the hall is small.  With modern spacing for the seating, the hall accommodates an audience of 440.  There is no lobby to speak of, so of course no intermission is possible.  And there is no air conditioning.  So with all the people and the lights, the hall got quite hot.  My shirt was soaked through with sweat, and the orchestra had to retune between the second and third movements due to the increasing heat - and this is in winter!  Remarkably, at opening season in 1828, 1100 people were admitted.  Hard to imagine.  For one thing, at the time, there would be been no seating on the main floor - that was standing room. And the balconies must have been full to overflowing.  And all the women in their voluminous and elegant early 19th century gowns!  It must have been terribly hot and uncomfortable with 1100 people in that small hall.  No wonder the ladies had fans.

As for the music...  well this is the first concert I have attended where the orchestra had to play an encore - and then after the encore the audience still wouldn't cease, so they played part of the overture again.

Oh, I should note that the conductor, Jean-Philippe Sarcos, also conducts l'académie de musique, which is one of the two orchestras that Silke plays in.

The most chic mop store in Paris

The Carrousel du Louvre is an underground shopping centre connecting with the underground entrance to the Louvre, beneath the famous pyramid.  It is a very chic shopping centre, with brand name stores selling jewelry, watches, perfume and the like.  And, there is Perigot, a store which sells mops, buckets, dust pans, garbage cans, coat hangers, and so on.

The inverted pyramid inside the Carrousel du Louvre, mirroring the outside entrance pyramid to the Louvre.

Perigot - when only the finest mop will do.

The Cold Song from Henry Purcell's King Arthur

For Silke's formation musicale class at the conservatory, she has to sing the cold song from Henry Purcell's musical theatre work, King Arthur.  She had already learned it, but wanted to see some performances of it.  So we looked it up on youtube.  My goodness but there are wildly different interpretations!  Here are three of our favourites.  If you don't like Baroque opera music, and not everyone does, than skip this post.  You regularly-scheduled Paris-related posts will return after this interruption.

The first is the most straight-forward performance, by the countertenor Andreas Scholl.  The orchestra is playing on period instruments, in an authentic style.  Silke's comment on this one, "I can't believe how good that is."  She listened to it a lot.

The next one, sung by Nanette Scriba, is what Silke and Jerome call the "Spaghetti Western" interpretation.  Not because of the visuals or the singing, but because the tangy guitar, especially in the intro, sounds like it could be the opening score for a Sergio Leone movie.  In this performance, the original English lyrics are translated (loosely) into German.

And the last one is wild and wacky and fun!  No credits on the youtube video (arg!), but your music sleuth (me) has identified it as a 2005 production by Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor.  The cold song starts at 2:15.

What all these performances have in common is that they are German productions.  (OK, the last is Austrian).  You can laugh at them - we did - in fact there may have been some danger of someone here dying of laughter - but at the same time they are three really great and daring performances that show what you can do with Baroque music today.  I don't think it's not just coincidence that these are German productions.  More than once now I've heard someone here introduce a musical project by way of explaining they were attempting something that exists in Germany, but up until now hadn't existed in France.  Who knows why that is?  Maybe it's something in the water, or maybe it's critical mass, or maybe it is, as I've heard ventured, that artists can actually afford to live in Berlin.

Addition: The New York Times recently printed this article about music in Berlin: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/arts/music/classical-musicians-too-make-berlin-their-capital.html?smid=pl-share .