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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
July 22, 2008
The Wagnerian soprano Helen Traubel (bear with me, this will become relevant) was well-known for her non-operatic appearances on radio and television.
It was presumably just prior to one of these appearances that her co-star, the comedian Jimmy Durante wandered into her dressing room while she was en deshabillé.
Backing rapidly out, Durante had the presence of mind to gasp to the onlookers "Nobody knows the Traubel I've seen."
OK, I admit that the relevance to Tuesday's concert is, at best, tenuous, but the story came to my mind during the group of four Spirituals arranged by William Ryden.
As Gary Karr remarked, the evening was an "ethnic bag", particularly well represented by this grouping of "Black spirituals" played by "two Asians and a semite" - or, to be more precise, by Masanori Ichikawa, Xin Wang and Karr himself.
Particularly memorable were the harmonics which closed the third spiritual - Nobody Knows - and the sense of fun which imbued the finale, Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho (shouldn't that be "ob Jericho"?).
Although a cynic might remark that the Basses Loaded! format has indeed become formulaic, why change a working formula? And the enthusiasm of Tuesday's capacity crowd showed that this one does work well - very well.
Where else, for instance, can you hear an ensemble of eighteen double basses ranged around the concert hall filling your head (and body) with a Bach chorale prelude (this year is was "Ebarm' dich mein, O Herre Gott", BWV721)?
No matter what spirits one is in before the concert, this now-standard opening item, with Harmon Lewis seeming simply to stroke the keys of the piano and Karr leading his willing students in the chorale melody, is guaranteed to lift them.
The ensemble then played the Sonata No.4 (short of spending a half hour or so with The New Grove, I am unable to identify this any more precisely) by Corelli. It was distinguished by a wonderfully hefty bass line - at least half the ensemble was playing it - and marvellously clear contrapuntal lines.
A highlight of these evenings is aways the group of pieces played by the Karr-Lewis Duo and I was delighted to realise that the first of them, Alice Spatz's Romance with a Doublebass, was one of those marvellous pieces for talking bassist written for Karr himself.
This one is a setting of the famous humorous short story by Chekhov, which,among other things, gave us the rare opportunity of hearing (part of) Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 played on the bass. Although the piece was a good twenty or thirty minutes long, the audience was rapt throughout and the only thing that would have kept a dropping pin from audibility was the frequency of the chuckles and even outright laughs.
Karr and Lewis followed this with a pair of pieces by the greatest bassist of the first half of the 20th century, Serge Koussevitsky.
It was in these, admittedly somewhat slight pieces, that the true greatness of the duo shone out: music making of this order is a rare thing.
The second half opened with two pieces performed by Karr, Lewis and the remarkable Hector Tirado. Karr introduced his student with copious praise and then revealed to the audience - a real "Beethoven 9" moment - that Tirado could not actually hear what was being said.
I am sure that Tirado would rather be judged for his musicianship - which is superb - rather than as a circus act: the andante from a concerto for two voices (Grove again) by Handel brought the best out of all three players, with the elegant interwoven lines possessing a profound and noble lyricism.
Telemann's Canonic Duo, which followed, was - as Karr promised - a great deal of fun.
The evening ended - as is traditional - with the ensemble playing a group of (mostly) familiar pieces.
Although I am sure I cannot be the only audience member to whom the name of Georg Goltermann was a new one, he was clearly a hardworking composer, as the Serenade which we heard - a luscious piece - was his Op.119, No.2.
The next piece was one of four which would have sent MiV's early music specialist into paroxysms: the (in)famous Canon by Johann Pachelbel. Karr adopted a fairly slow pace - when the melodic decorations kicked in it was obvious just why - yet the music proved surprisingly effective, although no performance has ever convinced me that the piece is not simply too long.
Which just leaves the final item, Strauss's ebullient Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, Op.214 (now there was another hard worker) which saw the also-traditional appearance of the Karr-Lewis canines, Shiro and Shinju, resplendent in their Basses Loaded! t-shirts.
Shinju, as befits the senior partner, maintained an almost aloof, elder-statesdog posture, while Shiro was clearly there to make friends.
As usual, the audience went out into the night with smiles on their faces.
Bass: Richard Backus, Andrew Book, Nathan Clark, Shawn Dakin,
Ryan Ford, Jane Heise, Masanoir Ichikawa, Victoria Jones, Cemil
Kandemir, Gary Karr, Sarah Klein, C.J. Kumar, Mark Lewis,
Lamberto Nigro, Alex Olson, Hector Tirado, Xin Wang, Moe
Winograd: basses.
Piano: Harmon Lewis.
Canines: Shinju,
Shiro.
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