Dina Kirnarskaya, Plump Jack
Sir John Falstaff, known to those close to him as "Pot-bellied Jack", appeared in the Grand Hall of Moscow Conservatory and as two different people at the same time. Scenes from the famous opera of Verdi, "Falstaff", and from the opera of our contemporary, American composer Gordon Getty, "Plump Jack", were performed on the same evening.
Both authors are known to all, one as a musical genius, the other as a very wealthy man. In this, however, he was not too lucky, strange as it may seem.
The composer Getty honorably lived up to the comparison with Maestro Verdi, included in the program of the concert. Just like the Shakespeare of comedies, the Shakespeare of "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" or the "Twelfth Night" does not resemble the author of "Hamlet" or "King Lear", Getty's music, clear-cut, chary and with a tragic shade does not resemble the juicy music of Verdi, full of buffoonery. Here both composers are faithful to the literary original: Verdi to "The Merry Wives of Windsor", Getty - to "Henry IV". The drunkard and jester Falstaff is represented in Getty's opera to the manner of Shakespeare's joker, where burlesque and irony are inseparable from prophetic implication.
Getty's modern opera is more favorable to the actors than the old man Verdi. Despite the orchestra of Mikhail Pletnyov, brilliant in every respect, the secrets of belcanto proved to be independent of the singers. But, instead, in the opera "Plump Jack" everyone managed to make a brilliant display....
The Moscow premier is one of 40 performances of "Plump Jack". But there will be only three full productions, all in the USA. This is far too few for an opera which is staged so well. It simply suffocates without a theatre, without scenery and costumes....
Dina Kirnarskaya, Annabel Lee
The program included Rakhmaninov's "The Bells" to poems by Edgar Allan Poe, and settings by the American composer Gordon Getty of works by English Romantic poets. Commenting on the program, Pletnev said that they had wanted to draw attention to the influence of American and English poetry on 20th century culture as a whole.
Edgar Allan Poe died in the middle of the last century, but the year before the First World War his work became topical with its premonitions that ranged from the Messianic to the sepulchral. In common with all the late Romantics, Rakhmaninov described man's progress from the cradle to the grave, embracing the joyful peal of bells at festival time, and the thunderous tocsin. The music calls us to a better world which is still our own. Everything was readying itself for portentous events and world-shattering changes.
On the eve of the 21st century, we are once again in a period of expectation. Composers are again dusting down their copies of Edgar Allan Poe. Recently Gordon Getty has set to music the poem "Annabel Lee", a classic example of the "Poems of Youth and Death"....
On hearing Getty's music, one feels that it is not so much about eternal feelings as about what remains of them. His melodies sigh gravely and melt, away like a consumptive maid in Pushkin's poem. Truly "she is alive today, but gone tomorrow." In the music, the sound of horn calls, rural round dances, songs of confession and songs of remembrance is only half complete, sketched-in sparingly, as if it was somehow distorted and compressed....
Composers like Gordon Getty, who have not lost natural feelings, are still writing romantic music, and conductors like Mikhail Pletnev are still performing it. It is to be hoped that they will continue their happy partnership for some time to come.
Lou Fancher, Homework Suite
Bay Area composer Gordon Getty's earliest piano pieces emerged in the symphonic world premiere of "Homework Suite," a collection of five movements whose only disappointment was their brevity. From the mesmerizing "Seascape" through "Giga's" Irish-laced jig to the galloping "Night Horses," the symphony here demonstrated what was to be the evening's shining achievement: a tenacious command of American composers' widely diverging styles.
Barbara Rose Shuler, Overture to Plump Jack
The overture by Gordon Getty...to the opera "Plump Jack" proved a scintillating concert opener, spiced with moods and flavors from Shakespeare's "Henry IV," wherein the rotund Sir John Falstaff shows up prominently.
Getty's understanding of this pre-eminent Shakespeare character is impressive and the music clearly prefigures the drama from the sack-drinking revels to the challenges of the battlefield. It was delightful to hear Getty's music. He's a talented composer and this piece made a zesty complement to the other works on program.
Anna Picard, Usher House
Lesser sighs greet Getty's music, a compote of Britten, Barber and Bernard Herrmann, which illustrates the drama with spooky glissandi, chromatic spirals, a plaintive oboe and twig-on-window-pane sul ponticello strings. There is a magpie waltz and a listless love song, Where is my lady, and where has she gone?, for the narrator (Jason Bridges), who is identified here as Poe and accessorised with a crush on the cataleptic Madeline Usher (sung offstage by Anna Gorbachyova and personified on stage by the dancer Joanna Jeffries).
With lines such as "Nothing can be hidden from Eddie Poe!" Getty is at least a better composer than he is a librettist.