The final concerts [of the season; corrected 5/3] in the Chamber Music at St. Peter's series in Charlotte will take place Tuesday, May 2, with one lunchtime program at 12:10 and the same program repeated at 5:30 for the after-work crowd. I'll be joining Calin Lupanu, concertmaster of the CSO, and Alan Black, principal cellist and Artistic Director of the CMSP series, for Dmitri Shostakovich's Trio No. 2 in E minor. Is there any chamber music work with piano written since 1940 that has attained "standard repertoire" status the way this trio has?

Like Tchaikovsky's trio for the same forces, this work was written as a response to the composer's grief at the death of a close friend; in this case, the critic and musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky. While the first three movements are each potent in their own way (the first with its haunting fugal opening, featuring high harmonics on the cello; the second a wild scherzo with no abatement; the third a lament in the form of a passacaglia) it is in the final movement where we get the true payoff. With its use of Jewish dance themes providing the basic musical material, it begins as an absurdly simple, almost goofy dance with pizzicato strings and pizzicato-like textures in the piano. Before it's done, we've gone from that to the most anguished chromatic pleadings from the strings against thunderous octaves in the piano. The opening theme of the entire work, pale and hollow in its original incarnation, now reappears at last in full-voiced technicolor as a fugal trio between violin, cello, and piano left hand, against a swirling cascade of sound from the piano right hand.

But the trio ends as quietly and simply as it began; when all is said and done, one of the predominant impressions of Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 is how much he accomplishes with a sonic minimum. As a pianist, I'm always struck by that in Shostakovich's writing for my instrument, whether it be this piece, his solo Preludes, the Viola Sonata, the Piano Quintet, the 7 Songs on texts by Alexander Blok, you name it. One of his favorite pianistic devices is having a tune appear in unison in both hands, but spaced at the very extremes of the keyboard, very high and very low. The music can be very quiet and simple, but you feel the vast physical space enclosed, between the notes.

Here is some more interesting background information (via Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center) on the trio if you'd like to know more.

Not a lot of people know this, but the Muzak corporation is headquartered in Fort Mill, South Carolina, just across the state border from Charlotte. This and many other engrossing facts appear in David Owen's April 10 piece on the company in the New Yorker.  Owen's piece is mostly flattering; prominent mention is given to Muzak's Heart and Soul Foundation, which provides funds for music education to underprivileged students around the country, and to "Noise!," a summer music camp that gives some of those same students an opportunity to learn about many of the "less visible parts of the music business." Of course, it's still the commercial music industry the kids are learning about; I suppose the Muzak honchos would consider classical music one of the invisible parts.

Muzak has transformed itself completely from its days as a purveyor of bland "elevator music," which apparently is only still popular in corporate Japan.  Now Muzak basically acts as a kind of DJ, organizing and providing pop music content appropriate to each corporate customer it services. Prediction: in 10 years or so, the old-style "elevator music" will attain a kind of retro-hipness and will serve as background music again in certain martini lounges.

Owen writes, "During Muzak’s early decades, office workers and others sometimes complained that public background music was an invasion of privacy. Some people feel that way today, although the first thing many of us do when we find ourselves alone with our thoughts is to reach for the handiest means of drowning them out—by putting on a pair of headphones, say, or by sliding a disk into the car’s CD player." (Owen doesn't explore the deeper implications of this.) He quotes a member of the marketing department at Muzak: "Our biggest competitor is silence."

Anybody know where I can buy some stock in Silence, Inc.?  On second thought, I suppose that's a bad investment these days.

This Thursday at 7 PM, the chamber music series at the Columbia Museum of Art hosted by Charles Wadsworth will have its final event of the season. You'll have the chance to hear three of the top performing artists in the United States (Chee-Yun, violin; Andres Diaz, cello; Wendy Chen, piano) collaborate in chamber music performances in the intimate space of the museum's atrium. The concert, which includes Johannes Brahms' luscious C Major Trio, will be MC'd as always by the inimitable Wadsworth, who was recently recognized by a special Verner Award from the South Carolina Arts Commission.

If you didn't catch it during its run at the Columbiana Grande cinemas recently, I strongly urge you to go to the Nickelodeon theatre this week to see the documentary, "Why We Fight." It's a tremendously thought-provoking film, using as its starting point the remarkable farewell address delivered by President Eisenhower in January 1961 in which he famously warned against the rise of the "military-industrial complex." (I was born 13 days before his speech.) Yes, the film addresses 9/11, the Iraq War, and all the controversial issues therein, but connects it all to a much wider historical context. Though it has an unmistakeable point of view, it lets Richard Perle and William Kristol, among others, have their say as well. Ultimately this film is much more powerful than "Fahrenheit 9/11," in that it's considerably more sober-minded, and not merely red meat thrown to the converted (ha!--how's that for mixing metaphors?). The New York City cop whose story is at the heart of the film, comes across as a kind of American Everyman---a man whose patriotism, love of country, and belief in tradition is second to none, but whose simple expectation of honesty from his leaders is confounded. His disbelief is etched across his face and rendered by the very sound of his voice.

"Why We Fight" is running Tuesday through Thursday this week at the Nick.

They've had lovely spring weather this week in Milwaukee, so the fact that our (the group Present Music) rehearsals for Paul Dresher's "The Tyrant" have all been in the evenings has meant that I could still enjoy some of the mild temperatures and clear skies. I first heard Paul Dresher's music the same night I did my first concert with Steve Reich and Musicians, on the old "Horizons" series presented by the NY Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, in June 1986. We shared the bill with Dresher's ensemble and the electrifying performer Rinde Eckert as they did sections from "Slow Fire." I've been an admirer of Dresher's work ever since.

Dresher's name doesn't always pop up in the first tier when American composers of his generation are discussed; some of that might have to do with the fact that he has been West Coast-based for his entire career, or maybe it's because most of his output is been for theatrical productions, quasi-operas like "Slow Fire," "Ravenshead," or the work we're doing, which is a one-man one-act one-hour opera showcasing the remarkable tenor John Duykers. But I've been involved with enough of Dresher's music to know that he has that most precious of commodities for any composer: a distinctive and unmistakeable voice. That's not to say that his music has stayed static for twenty years. "The Tyrant" finds much of his pulse-based, quasi-minimalist textures employed in the service of a (at times) harshly chromatic harmonic language that suits the text well. Perhaps from his long experience and association with artists like Duykers, Dresher also is quite adept at setting text, also a rare skill these days.

From my piano bench behind most of the action, it's hard to get a total sense of the effect of "The Tyrant." But from what I have perceived so far, Duykers is a powerful actor and there are some startling soundscapes created from the music. Dresher has created an inextricable link in virtually every moment of the work between the text, the action onstage, and the music. The work has been done before this in Seattle and Philadelphia, and critical reaction has been uniformly positive. I wish "The Tyrant" a long reign. [Update posted April 24: review of Milwaukee performance is here.]