Issue 66

In Copper issues 60 and 61, I interviewed Princeton University professor Edgar Choueiri about his groundbreaking developments in three-dimensional audio. Choueiri took us through the mechanisms underlying the perception of three-dimension audio, and the practical issues involved with realizing it in real-world audio systems. He described the limiting factors, and the approach he took to invent his patented breakthrough technology which is finally able to make true three-dimensional audio a reality. Along the way he made some quite startling claims regarding what his technology is able to achieve. So it was that at the end of July I went down to Princeton to visit his laboratory and hear some of this for myself. Edgar first took me through his Plasma Space Propulsion laboratory, where he has a number of experiments running, each one involving a vacuum chamber you could hold a meeting in. The challenges of space propulsion are relatively simple to understand. Basically, you have to chuck mass out of the back of your spaceship, and the harder you chuck it out, the more thrust you get. With a rocket, it is a chemical reaction which determines how fast the mass is chucked out, and in the grand scheme of things it tends to be nowhere near fast enough. But if you first ionize your mass to convert it to a plasma, and then send the resultant charged particles through a powerful particle accelerator, you can effectively chuck mass out of the back of your spaceship with a lot more force. Right now this is the best known option for transporting significant payloads over interplanetary distances. In one corner of the Plasma Propulsion Laboratory, behind a large white screen, sits a white Tesla Model S. Now, many of you may know that Elon Musk owns not only Tesla, but also Space-X, and that he recently launched a Tesla sports car into orbit. So you’d be forgiven for imagining that this must be some bizarre prototype of a plasma-powered space-going sedan. But you’d be wrong … this is a test bed for various exotic in-car audio systems. It’s just that there was no way to get a Tesla Model S into Choueiri’s third-floor audio lab! But, as things turned out, this was a foretaste of things to come. So, next we went upstairs to the 3D Audio Lab, which actually occupies about three times as much space as the Plasma Propulsion Lab. The core of it is the main demo room, which has a small anechoic chamber at one end, and an audio set-up at the other end. My original plan was to have my HRTF (head-related transfer function) measured, but unfortunately the measurement setup had been temporarily dismantled, so that wasn’t an option. We focused most of the rest of the afternoon on a demo of the various capabilities of the BACCH software. Choueiri’s BACCH software is a very complicated system. Complicated to understand, and complicated to use. The user interface is very dense, in a Pro Audio kind of way … but at least I wasn’t driving it. You can buy the BACCH software directly from Choueiri’s company Theoretica Applied Physics, and it comes in various forms, all of them, it has to be said, pretty expensive. At the top of the pile is the ‘BACCH-SP’, a complete solution in hardware, including a DAC said to be of a cost-no-object no-compromise design. I believe it sells for a whopping $54k. Then there is a scaled-down version, without the DAC, called ‘BACCH-SP dio’, at just under $20k. Finally there is a software-only solution called ‘BACCH4MAC’, in three versions priced from $2k -$5k. We auditioned the top-end ‘Audiophile Edition’ of BACCH4MAC (the three versions differ only in the bells and whistles added on, and not in the core 3D audio software). Needless to say, BACCH4MAC is only available on the Mac platform. At the core of the BACCH software is the need to calibrate the combination of the individual user, the audio system, and the listening room. BACCH is a highly personalized listening system. So the first thing that had to be done was to perform a calibration of my ears in his system. For this we used a pair of carefully calibrated in-ear microphones which I placed in my ear as I sat in the listening chair. The calibration required minimal active participation on my part, other than sitting there as various test tones were played. All I had to do was move left and right as instructed, watched by the baleful blue eye of a webcam which was tracking my head movements. The tones themselves comprised three simple tone sweeps, each repeated twice. The whole process took about 20 seconds after which it didn’t have to be repeated. Once the calibration was done we could get on with the business of listening. But before that, we got to play some games, since I had the in-ear microphones installed. You see, at that point in time, my head was basically a binaural stereo microphone, personally matched to my own HRTF. The BACCH system could therefore make ultra high-quality recordings of anything I chose to listen to. So we made a brief recording of Edgar walking around the room, talking. First he stood behind each of the speakers in turn, and between them in the middle. Then he wandered off to one side, completely to my left, where he opened a door and stepped out into the corridor where his voice echoed grandly. Then he stepped back in and came right up to my head and whispered in my ear. Finally he walked behind me and round to the other side where he whispered in my right ear. At the end of the recording he saved the result in a file on the BACC4MAC’s playlist. Playing back this recording normally, without engaging the BACCH software, was not at all impressive. The sound occupied a diffuse volume between the speakers with only minimal motion detectable. However, with BACCH engaged the difference was night and day. I heard Edgar Choueiri pretty much exactly as though he was in the room. He was physically located with great precision, and as he walked off to the left … a long way to the left of the left speaker … his sonic image moved flawlessly too. Where he stepped out into the corridor I heard the exact acoustics of somebody speaking in an echoey corridor through an open door ten feet to my left. His sonic image then walked back into the room, came up to me, and whispered into my left ear. Finally, it walked behind me and whispered into my right ear. So let’s just recap. With two speakers playing in front of me, I could clearly hear voices whispering directly into both my ears, and a voice speaking to me from behind my back. I heard the acoustics of a long corridor through an open door ten feet to my left. If that isn’t impressive, I don’t know what is. At this point I wanted to talk about actual playback of music, but there isn’t enough space here, and in any case I will be borrowing a BACCH4MAC system to try in my reference system, where I will be focusing solely, and at length, on real-world music playback. But I have to say that the BACCH system did have a notable, and beneficial impact on all of the music that I did listen to, although it stands to reason that Edgar will have populated his playlist with various tracks that showcase the system’s capabilities to their best advantage. At home I will be playing whatever I choose from my own extensive library. If you read my previous Copper interviews with Edgar, you’ll know I was quite taken by an almost outrageous claim he made about headphone listening. In effect, he said that a BACCH system can emulate the effect of listening to a pair of speakers, while using headphones. In fact, he claimed that a cheap pair of headphones can emulate the most expensive pair of speakers in the world, and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Them thar’s fightin’ words, and, to mix metaphors, I wanted to taste the beef for myself. So I asked for a demo of the BACCH system over headphones. To do this, we required another calibration run. This time, we used a pair of open-backed headphones, which makes the demo a lot simpler. Although he had a pair of Stax SR009s to hand (which we also use at BitPerfect), these require a more elaborate setup with their own amplifier, so we used a pair of Sennheiser HD 650s, a nice piece of kit that can be had for about $400. I put the in-ear microphones back in, and placed the headphones over the top of them. Then, with the web-cam watching my every move, we went through the test tones once more. Fifteen seconds later the calibration job was done. Edgar chose a binaurally-recorded music track – I don’t recall what it was – and told me he would play it first through the headphones, then through speakers, and finally through the headphones with the BACCH software emulating the speakers. Played through the headphones, the binaural track sounded to me like all binaural tracks tend to do … a bunch of sounds swarming around inside a sphere about 2 feet in diameter around my head. Then he played the track though the speakers, and because the headphones were open-backed I could hear them quite clearly. I listened carefully so that I would imprint a good mental image to compare with when he switched to the BACCH-emulation of the speakers. But there was no third track forthcoming. When I turned in frustration to ask Edgar to play the emulation that I was so keen to hear, he just grinned at me. “Richard, that was the emulation!” To say that my jaw dropped would be an absolute rank understatement. It was quite an impressive afternoon, and quite a busy one, with a large part of it involving the installation of BACCH4MAC by Edgar on my reference Mac Mini which I had brought along for that purpose. I also picked up a pair of his ‘BACCH-BM-Pro’ calibrated in-ear microphones so I could perform my own accurate calibrations in front of my reference system. Since we finished quite late, and my wife was expecting to meet me back at our hotel a good two hours earlier, Edgar walked me out and offered to drive me the short distance back to Princeton. We walked up to his car which was, naturally enough, a Tesla Model S. I had never been in one … but I have heard a lot about it! I asked him which version of the Tesla Model S it was, since they all look just the same, and it turns out he has the rare and almost legendary P100D. This version comes with what is officially called “Ludicrous Mode”, and is highly appropriate for a guy who runs a Plasma Propulsion Laboratory. Basically … if you can believe this … nothing this side of a Formula 1 car is able to accelerate off the line as fast as a Tesla Model S in Ludicrous Mode. The linear acceleration is said to be about 1.5G. “Have you ever experienced Ludicrous Mode?” asked Edgar. “No”, I replied, wearing a hopeful grin. “Would you like to?” he asked. Damn right I would like to! So he went through the process of engaging “Ludicrous Mode”, during which the Model S’s colossal touch-screen console goes through a Star-Trek style warp drive display of driving through a star field. We are lined up at one end of an ordinary parking lot in Princeton University, at 7pm on a Tuesday evening. Edgar looks at me and asks “Are you sure you want to do this?”. I nod. And off we go… Oh my giddy aunt! Holy mother of God!! He really has fitted one of his plasma drives to this thing!!! The acceleration is beyond description. How is this possible? It is ferocious. It is relentless. My body is sucked violently into the seatback and my head clamped to the headrest. I sense the onset of tunnel vision. And it all unfolds in the unearthly silence of a crypt, with the plush comfort of a Bentley. It’s the parking lot of a university, for Chrissakes, and we’re doing Warp 9! My heart rate leaps to a level from which it won’t fully recover until the next day. I grip the sumptuous creamy leather of the Tesla’s seats with a tenacity that has surely left a permanent imprint. Yes, Edgar, I do want to do this!

Having entered my allegedly-golden years, I have little tolerance for pontification or pretense.  I’m more likely to quote Kafka or Bart Simpson than scripture of any form…but don’t worry, I won’t go into my deficiencies of character or education right now, plentiful though they are.

So—take a deep breath.

There are some writings that are time-honored, though, and for me a few verses from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes have always held truth. And as a senescent cynic, they especially ring true:

…there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new?

A knowledge of history is both blessing and curse. It’s a blessing when you realize that you’re following a path that someone has previously followed—and then abandoned, with good reason. Such knowledge enables you to change course. It’s a curse when you view the latest and greatest whatever du jour, hyped as new, and without taking a beat you can say, “oh, that was done by so-and-so in 1927, blah blah in 1946, and…”

That’s me, in audio. The fact that I write about vintage audio keeps that kind of knowledge close to the surface, periodically unearthed by the research I do.

So: what is there in audio that’s truly new? I’ve asked this before, but it’s a question that bears repeating. Anssi Hyvonen, head of Amphion Loudspeakers and a very tough customer indeed, commented on Facebeook regarding Bang & Olufsen  going back into the black, “299 Euro wireless earbuds save the trend-setting giant? What does it tell about the state of our industry?”

That’s an excellent question. Some years ago BC (Before the Crash), Bang & Olufsen’s products  provided the best distributed-audio solutions, combined with elegant (if sometimes quirky) design, and solid construction. A number of marketing missteps combined with the ’08 crash, turned a $2B company into a company that today is celebrating being barely in the black at $500M. During the last decade, B & O has gone through a couple CEOs, sold its automotive division to Harman, sold its ICE Power division,  and sold a factory that the company built in the Czech republic.

A number of industry folk thought that B & O was done for, but the company has staged a bit of a comeback with, yes, wireless earbuds…as well as headphones, Bluetooth speakers, and other products that traditional audio companies are quick to label “lifestyle”. Now: I don’t know about you, but MY lifestyle demands high-value, indestructible products that perform well. In audio, that also means, “sounds good”. And also, fuss-free and un-tweaky.

Are those bad qualities? I sure don’t think so, but many in audio snidely label any product that is easy to use and doesn’t look like it came from a lab or a recording studio as “lifestyle”. Huh.

At one time in my life, “lifestyle” products for me meant Magneplanar Tympanis tri-amped with Audio Research tube gear, used with Nakamichi Dragon cassette deck and turntable. My lifestyle now demands less clutter, less complication, and less stuff. Is that wrong?

Again, I sure don’t think so. From the ’50s up until the ’80s, quality audio systems were standard home entertainment gear, fitting into the lifestyles of students, families, doctors, attorneys, mechanics—regular people. Normal people.

And then the terms “high-end audio” and “audiophile” entered the everyday lexicon, and the perception spread that one had to be some type of golden-eared elitist to even be able to enjoy the good stuff. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told, “oh, I couldn’t even tell the difference with that stuff.”

I’ve challenged that statement every time I’ve heard it said, and given some type of demo whenever I could. And whaddya know? Even the biggest skeptics can tell the difference, and most really enjoy hearing their music well-reproduced.

Note the key phrase: “their music”. You’re not likely to win over a fan of Childish Gambino with “Keith Don’t Go”. If someone has never heard their music over anything better than $10 earbuds or a cheap Bluetooth speaker, they probably don’t even realize that there is something better, much less that “something better” means  more enjoyable.

So what his this got to do with there being nothing new under the sun?

Maybe we don’t necessarily need new—we just need the old idea that music is valuable, and worth having in  one’s life, and one’s home. Drop the snob stuff. Make it easy to use. Stop talking about audiophiles, and focus on music lovers.

I’ll bet you that if we did all that, we could stop worrying about our hobby, our obsession, our lifestyle, going away.

Because music sure as hell isn’t going away.

Try to imagine.

I had discovered music only the previous year — discovered it, in the sense of getting how good it could be. I was 10.

I had been listening to pop music starting, more or less, in 1965. The Beatles, the Stones’ “Satisfaction”, Herman’s Hermit’s “Henry the Eighth”, I remember liking them, but liking them the way I liked good TV, like the Addams Family. It wasn’t ART. The next year I got into the Monkees, which was music made for my 8-year-old ears. And was perfectly consumable TV.

But in ’67 I heard “Within You Without You” and life was changed forever. This was pop music blended with ART.

I began to sleep with an AM clock radio next to my head, tuned to WFIL and WIBG. I have memories of pop music breaking into my dreams. Motown bled into the Fabs bled into plain old pop music bled into Stax-Volt. I was waking up. In the winter of 67/68 I heard Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”.

But in May of 1968, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, there was a voice that I’ve never gotten over. And she instructed me to Think.

Think I did.

 

I grew up in southwestern New Jersey, across the river from Philadelphia — an RCA boy. When my parents and brother first came to this country, they lived in an apartment on Mickle St. in Camden, a short walk to RCA. My brother Bob was born when they lived in a slightly bigger apartment on Highland Ave, in Pennsauken. But by the time I came along they lived in their first house in the Haddonleigh section of Haddon Township, two towns east of Camden — this took them about five years. But my uncle, aunt and cousin continued to live in Camden for another 15 years.

And for most of the 60s we would go into Camden on Saturday — and by the 60s, Camden was almost entirely black. My brother and I would play with the neighborhood kids. If you had asked me what the difference was between them and us, I might have said they were black, but it wasn’t really in my awareness that there was any difference. Our house was nice, but we had so little money that all of the socioeconomic ramifications were outside my thinking.

The night Martin Luther King was murdered, we were visiting some people, and I was alone in their kitchen when I heard it on the radio. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew he was important so I went into the living room and told everybody.

And that’s when it happened — when I became conscious that all around me, people were rightly pissed off. I would hear music sung by black people, and it suddenly occurred to me they WERE black, and I wasn’t. I would hear it differently — as theirs, not mine.

And then came Aretha, giving voice — joyful, and angry, and righteous voice — to all of it. And telling me to THINK, think about what I was trying to do to her. And singing it to all of us — FOR all of us. I didn’t personalize it, for whatever reason — maybe being Jewish, which was only became partly normalized in the decade in which I was born, or my parents coming to the US so recently. But I got the point, instantly.

Aretha represented, to me and so many other folks, not just the righteous struggle of Dr. King and the importance of people really being what, as a child, I had naively just assumed we all were, but the sheer, explosive joy and power contained in that struggle. The Queen of Soul, the queen of our hearts. The Nation Magazine said: “Aretha Franklin – Musical Genius, Truth Teller, Freedom Fighter”.

“It was neither my intention nor my plan, but some were saying that in my voice they heard the sound of confidence and self-assurance.” –Aretha

It’s the power of music — of her music, born in the black church, but also of music in general. Everybody can hear it, and get it, and it never found a higher expression than in Aretha Franklin. We were all under the umbrella of one color when she sang — the color of awestruck.

He escaped, and not just once. The outward circumstances of his life read like a spy thriller. Born in Warsaw to Russian Jewish parents active in the Yiddish theatre, Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996) graduated from the conservatory there in 1939. Shortly after the Germans invaded Poland, Weinberg fled to Minsk, where he continued his studies; his family remained behind, eventually dying in a concentration camp. Once Russia itself was threatened, Weinberg was evacuated to Tashkent. There he met Dmitri Shostakovich, who became a lifelong friend. In 1943 Weinberg moved to Moscow and lived there happily for the rest of his life.

Except, of course, for a long period when he was first harassed, then imprisoned by the Stalin regime for the crime of writing “insufficiently optimistic” music; officials found it wanting in proletarian exaltation but reeking of Jewishness. The harassment began in 1946 with condemnations of Weinberg and his colleague Yuri Levitin for “formalism,” but in Weinberg’s case this was linked to suspicious associations: his father-in-law Solomon Mikhoels, an outspoken activist, was murdered on Stalin’s orders in 1948 as part of the anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot. Around that time, Russian agents began to tail the composer, who was finally arrested in February 1953 and charged with committing “Jewish bourgeois nationalism.” Had it not been for Stalin’s death a month later, Weinberg, like so many others, might simply have vanished. Shostakovich interceded on his behalf, and he was released after spending eleven weeks in prison.

To what extent does Weinberg’s music reflect his tumultuous life? As you will see, this is not necessarily a frivolous question. I ask it because the recent Weinberg boomlet takes full advantage of his life story. There’s more to it, of course: Weinberg was a prolific composer who wrote in accessible post-Romantic style. Unlike his heroes Shostakovich and Mahler, he did not churn out music quite so laden with irony, bitter humor, or general pathos (although he was pretty good at pathos, general and otherwise). More often than not, Weinberg leavened the bitter with the sweet: lots of lyrical, oft-repeated melodies, interesting counterpoint you can actually follow, and folk elements (remember, his parents made a living in popular theatre). These days, people who’ve exhausted Liszt, Bruckner, and Rachmaninov can pivot toward Weinberg as a reliable source of Romanticism. Let’s explore that.

Beginners may want to start with Weinberg’s solo and chamber music, including his popular Piano Quintet , op. 18 (1944). Although he wrote 26 symphonies and six operas, bringing him a degree of (Russian) public recognition, the smaller works better represent his compositional persona. He knew his friends would gratefully play his next violin sonata, string quartet, piano piece. He knew those works, even when marked by personal experience or social critique, were less likely to attract official disapproval. He could simply pour his heart into the music and see it eagerly received.

Inspired by Shostakovich’s 1940 Piano Quintet, Weinberg’s Quintet reveals a man—here we go with the biographical elements!—happy finally to have arrived in Moscow but also keenly aware of the suffering in Poland and his own family’s uncertain status. An ambiguous, murmuring figure introduces melodies that vacillate between longing and glimpses of sunlight:

Furtive gestures tossed between piano and strings dominate the second movement, in which pizzicati and spidery piano filigree eventually culminate in high drama. Perhaps that prepares us for the grotesque scherzo, which more baldly evokes Mahler’s fun-house-mirror sensibility:

We have been listening to a new recording of this work from pianist Jeanne Golan and the Attacca Quartet (Steinway & Sons 30072). In four of its five movements, they deliver a more satisfying account than in another recent recording of the Quintet, this from Piotr Sałajczyk and the Silesian Quartet (Accord ACD 239–2). The Attaccas’ timings for individual movements are usually at least a minute longer than those clocked by the Silesians. Yet there’s never a sense of lethargy; rather they use the extra time to provide nuance, weight, sensitivity, and—of all things—musically justified momentum.

Sałajczyk and the Silesians do better in the final movement, a virtuoso tour de force:

That movement marks the only appearance of a quasi-Irish jig and a touch of boogie-woogie. Thematically, it’s the weakest material in the work, Weinberg trying his hand at False Joy à la Shostakovich. He manages to bring things almost to a boil before losing steam, at which point the mournful music of the first movement returns. Ghosts and shadows get the last word.

The Attacca Quartet album includes Cello Sonata No. 2, featuring Andrew Yee, and the lovely Sonatina op. 49 (1950–51) for piano. The Silesian Quartet album (part of an effort by the Polish Ministry of Culture to reclaim “Wajnberg,” their native son), includes String Quartet No. 7. Both are reasonably well recorded. In what may be a first, engineer Lauren Sturm recorded Attacca’s album and served as piano technician; Dan Shores edited, mixed, and mastered, a bona fide hat trick.

If you heard the Silesians’ performance of String Quartet No. 7 and liked that—and you should, because it’s the true centerpiece of their album, a raging, heartfelt lament—you may want to explore the other quartets. If you heard and liked Cello Sonata No. 2, I recommend the violin sonatas: Grigory Kalinovsky, Starling Professor of Violin at Indiana University, has recorded all six plus the Sonatina op. 46 for Naxos (8.572320/21). He and pianist Tatiana Goncharova tastefully bring out much of this music’s essential character, including its moderating tendencies, and the recorded sound is warm and clear. If you want greater intensity, Gidon Kremer is available, albeit in small quantities: with Martha Argerich he toured Sonata No. 5 op. 53, written in 1953, an annus horribilis for Weinberg (alas, more biography!). Several bootlegs of the Kremer/Argerich performances are floating around, but Warner Classics’ Live from Lugano 2014 offers better sound and less audience noise:

Kremer also recorded Sonata No. 3 op. 126, for solo violin—a genre the composer launched late in his career—as part of a Live from Lockenhaus album (ECM 2368/69; both of Kremer’s Weinberg albums for ECM are recommendable).

The Weinberg cello sonata could also lead you toward his Cello Concerto op. 43 (1948), which gets a bang-up reading from Nicolas Altstaedt for Channel Classics (CCS 38116). Listen to the klezmer stylings in the second movement:

I mentioned a Weinberg solo violin sonata above: Linus Roth has recorded all three for Challenge (CC72688); he also essayed the complete violin-and-piano sonatas with colleague José Gallardo (Challenge CC72567). Besides being comprehensive, these two collections feature high-resolution sound. Roth is a passionate performer, so the high-res doesn’t go to waste.

Speaking of comprehensive, pianist Elisaveta Blumina is on track to record all of Weinberg’s piano music. Her fourth Weinberg CD for cpo (555 104-2) features an interesting mix of early, middle, and late: Sonata No. 2 op. 8 (1940), Sonata op. 49b (1950–51; rev. 1978), and Sonata No. 4 op. 56 (1955). I found the Mozartian style of No. 2 especially attractive:

The most “advanced” music on this disc stems from Weinberg’s having turned the Sonatina op. 49 (see above) into the longer Sonata, op. 49b. In the process, the composer incorporated tone clusters and modernist harmony:

Here’s where things got confusing, at least for the person writing Blumina’s liner notes. The music of op. 49b was described as “appealing and melodious,” “meet[ing] the demands of Socialist Realism.” Presumably that had been cribbed from notes on the earlier Sonatina op. 49, to which it more readily applies. But the second movement of op. 49b—heard above—was also referenced for its “strong, almost threateningly alarming chords” (i.e., the writer had no idea what to make of it). Moving right along, our writer labeled the carefully balanced Sonata No. 4 “the most tragic of Weinberg’s piano compositions,” one that “most grippingly reflects Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.”

As far as I know, Weinberg made no such claim himself. From the Adagio of No. 4:

Perhaps it’s time to call a moratorium on art-as-autobiography, especially for Weinberg. His music is not without expressive depth, but it seldom shocks or mocks; his approach was essentially conservative—and that’s worth further thought. We shouldn’t automatically assume specific connections between every angry tune, every brutal rhythm, and every painful moment in a life. Weinberg’s stylistic restraint over a long, prolific career may actually serve as the truest reflection of his experience. Having survived a horrific era, he persisted in creating things of beauty. He doesn’t need simple-minded “explainers.” Let the music speak for itself.

When Giovanni Battista Sammartini (c. 1700-1775) shows up in music history textbooks, it’s as inventor of the symphony. Or at least as the first to the use of the word “sinfonia” to mean a multi-movement instrumental work. But Sammartini wrote other genres as well, a fact celebrated on some recent recordings.

As a composer with one foot in the Baroque and the other in the up-and-coming “Classical” period, Sammartini focused much of his energy on purely instrumental music. And while he spent his whole life in Milan, his fame spread throughout Europe. He was a teacher of C.W. Gluck and an inspiration to J.S. Bach.

In the late Baroque period, concertos had become a favored type of piece because they contrasted the sound of the many with that of the few. Or the one. (Thank you, Mr. Spock.) Sammartini jumped on that bandwagon, and we have ten or so extant concertos by him, some for solo instruments and some concerti grossi, for two or three soloists with orchestra.

In his live recording on EMA Vinci, David Bellugi performs the Flute Concerto in F major on recorder, a substitution that would not have raised any eyebrows in Sammartini’s day, when recorders were far more common than flutes. (Fun fact: the Italian term for recorder is flauto dolce, or “sweet flute.”) This concerto is structured in what had become the standard three-movement format, with two up-tempo movements balanced by a slow one in the middle.

Bellugi’s performance, while earnest and passionate with some impressive technical passages, is at times shrill and uneven. The flutist/recorder player and musicologist died not long after making this recording in 2017, so perhaps poor health was a factor. He is not helped much by the Krasnoyarsk Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Mikhail Beniumov. You can hear in the opening Allegro how the playing lacks the buttoned-down tightness that gives pre-Classical galant style its courtly elegance.

 

The second movement is labeled Siciliana, a popular Baroque dance-movement type that’s sort of a slow, sexy gigue in a minor key. Bellugi and Beniumov choose a good tempo, but the mood is more sorrowful than mysterious.

 

Another issue I have with the Bellugi recording is its pitch. Playing concert A at modern 440 Hertz is an odd choice for a music historian performing mid-18^th-century Italian music. Happily, there’s another recent recording of this same piece at the more likely authentic pitch, around A=415 Hz. Alexis Kossenko’s recording is superior in pretty much every other aspect as well.

On the album Soave e Virtuoso (Aparté), Kossenko also plays the concerto on soprano recorder while he conducts the instrumental ensemble Les Ambassadeurs. Here’s the third movement, marked Allegro assai, in the quick 6/8 gigue time typical of a finale. You’ll hear the vertically aligned ensemble playing that provides a sense of stateliness: picture men in powdered wigs and buckled shoes bowing to corseted women in the palace ballroom.

The recording also includes music of Vivaldi and Tartini. Only one Sammartini movement is available on Youtube, but you can listen to the whole album on Spotify here:

 

Besides concertos, Sammartini also championed another favorite 18th-century genre, the sonata. In 2018 Sony digitally re-released a fine old analog recording by cellist Leonard Rose and pianist Leonid Hambro, originally on Columbia Masterworks. It’s part of Sony’s Leonard Rose – The Complete Sonata and Concerto Recordings.

While the focus of the original 1955 album is Schubert’s Arpeggione sonata, Rose also tacked on some Boccherini plus Sammartini’s three-movement Sonata for Cello and Basso Continuo in G Major. Because the solo instrument is in the low range, the keyboard alone covers the role of continuo without another instrument doubling the bass line.

It’s especially interesting to hear this great cellist playing in an era before “historical practice” was a concept. Sure, the shape of the phrases is anachronistically free-wheeling, but that cello tone is so rich, the bowing so precise, and the coordination with Hambro so simpatico, that I couldn’t care less when the piece was written. Here’s the first movement, Allegro:

 

On the historical-performance side of things, Susanna Piolanti has put out a new recording on the Tactus label of Sammartini sonatas for solo harpsichord (which the composer would have called a clavicembalo).

The Adagio second movement of Sonata No. 2 in G major demonstrates Piolanti’s mastery of the period’s flowery ornamentation, even if the playing lacks the longing and intensity that the score’s harmonic motions seem to call for.

 

Piolanti is more convincing in the second movement of the Sonata in E-flat major, marked Spiritoso, letting phrases hang for a breath to emphasize chords:

 

Considering he spent nearly 50 years as maestro di cappella at the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, it’s no surprise that Sammartini left behind some sacred vocal music. Nar Classical recently re-released a Naxos recording of two sacred cantatas performed by the ensemble Capriccio Italiano under the direction of Daniele Ferrari.

I’m sorry to say that the performance is generally weak, with unfocused orchestral playing and singing that just doesn’t have much power. Here’s tenor Vito Martino singing an aria from Pianto di Maddelena al sepolcro (The weeping of Mary Magdalene at the tomb):

 

At this point I had hoped to have a better recording of Sammartini sacred music to recommend instead, but somehow this repertoire does not seem to be attracting top-flight artists. So I’ll provisionally recommend the least distressing of those I dug up: Budapest Madrigal Choir and Budapest Strings, conducted by Ferenc Szekeres, performing Magnificats by Vivaldi, Albinoni, Sammartini, and Caldara. It’s on Hungaraton.

One important parting note: Giovanni Battista had an older brother, Giuseppe, who was also a gifted composer. If you’re in the market for Sammartini recordings, do pay attention to the first name! There are a couple of nice Giuseppe Sammartini concerto albums released recently, and he deserves to be regarded as separate from his more famous sibling.

I had been friendly with Roslyn for quite a few years. She was a stunning brunette with large flashing eyes and a figure that only young women are blessed with. Although we had a mutual attraction, we never dated, but saw each other from time to time.  At some point she met and fell in love with David and they planned a wedding.

A week before the nuptials I bumped into Roslyn.  After the usual hellos she told me that she had nothing to do and just planned to walk around town and enjoy the day, which was unusually fine for Scotland. I was working, but as the weather was so nice and she looked so good, I lied and told her that I had nothing urgent on my plate.

“ Would you like to go a drive with me?” I said.

“Love to.”

We drove up into the highlands past Loch Lomond and Drymen to Aberfoyle, then into the Trossachs. Somewhere near Brig o’ Turk, on the road to Callander, we stopped and decided to climb a nearby hill. The heather was blooming, the birds were singing and we were all alone. She turned to me and said,

“Roy, as you know I am soon getting married and I want to lose my virginity before then. I would like you to make love to me.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Here I was, a 22 year-old horny young man hearing the words I had always fantasized about. A beautiful woman wanted to make love to me? My heart almost stopped. I was about to act on her proposal when, from somewhere deep inside me, came this strange feeling. To my great surprise, I discovered that I had a conscience. I was friendly with David and the idea of deceiving him did not sit well. To her dismay, I explained how I felt and even though I was unbelievably flattered, I just couldn’t oblige. This reply killed the moment and we returned home in silence.

At the wedding I danced with her. I asked her if she now felt better about my decision. Her withering look said it all.

I did not see or hear anything about Roslyn for about 20 years. I had moved to America and just lost contact with many of my Scottish friends, but on a return visit I bumped into a cousin of hers.

Roslyn had thrown a surprise 40^th birthday party for David. She invited all his friends and loved ones. It was a terrific to-do with a caterer and a band. Everyone was having a great time when Roslyn stopped the music and made an announcement. She thanked everyone for coming and hoped they were all having a good time. Everybody clapped and cheered.

“And now for the real surprise of the evening,” she continued. She then beckoned David’s business partner to join her. He took her hand.

“David, we are leaving you, goodbye!”

And the two of them, hand in hand, left the party and David’s life.

As you may have surmised, this is a very personal article.

It’s about me.

It’s also about how I deal with all things i.e. business, personal etc.

I took off this past April and May to deal with a health issue.

This article is not about getting sympathy (those dreaded “Thoughts & prayers”) and, so far as the doctors have determined, my prognosis appears to be that I will die of something else eventually.

What this is about is more of a PSA (no, not a prostate blood test, more of a Public Service Announcement).

It’s about early detection.

It’s about not putting your head in the sand.

This about choosing to live first, and figuring out everything else afterward.

I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in March after my 6th biopsy. My father died of undiagnosed prostate cancer in 1984 at the age of 74.

We, meaning my older brother and I, figured that our dad developed it in his mid to late 60’s and by the time it killed him, it had metastasized into his liver and bones. It was so bad that the doctors told us that his ribcage disintegrated in their hands during the autopsy.

Yes, he was also a heavy 2 pack a day smoker and a regular drinker.

It’s interesting to note that both my brother and I—he is 10 years older—were so repulsed by the smell of tobacco and the incessant quasi-drunken atmosphere that permeated our apartment, that neither of us ever smoked or drank.

Our parents never went to doctors, and we are the total opposite.

About eight years ago, when my brother was 66, he was diagnosed with Prostate cancer. He called me and seemed very matter-of-fact about it.

He said that they caught it early and he was given several options to deal with it.  His cancer was not very aggressive.

My brother chose seeds and radiation and pretty quietly went about his business. He never brought it up unless I asked him. When his treatments were over, he told me and would occasionally mention that he is totally fine.

It’s been 8 years and he is, by all accounts, cancer free.

This is how I knew that it was not a matter of if for me, but when.

I am turning 66 this July so this time frame of cancer development, as it regards the males in my immediate family, was right on cue.

The only thing that was a little scary was that, this new tumor that they found on my 6th biopsy looked very aggressive: a Gleason 9, which is kind of like a 5-alarm fire.

After all the watching and testing. All the dozens of PSA’s and MRI’s (not to mention all the biopsies) this one came out of nowhere.

I was told that my decision making time was very short. No “watchful waiting” for me.

Because I had been getting biopsies for close to 13 years and had many friends who were treated for prostate cancer, I was armed with all the tools to make a decision that worked for me.

I chose surgery, a radical prostatectomy, over radiation. I didn’t want 40 radiation treatments and 2 years of hormone therapy.

I just wanted it out. Now.

Here’s why:

Out of the 20 or so guys I know who have had prostate cancer, most were younger then me when they were diagnosed, and most chose surgery. None of the guys knew each other but they all, to a man, said the same thing to me when I asked why surgery and not radiation.

They all just wanted it out of their bodies and, if it didn’t spread they all would get over the operation and move on with the lives quickly.

This is an aggressive decision as the operation is a tough one ,but one that mirrors my view on business.

Make the tough decisions, prepare yourself as best as you can, and then….go for it.

The other question I asked each one was:

How are you dealing with the incontinence and sexual dysfunction issues?

To be clear, there are these issues with any of the treatments, to the point that I was telling myself, kind of half jokingly over the years  “Hey, i’d rather die with my organs fully functioning then have any sexual or incontinence problems!”

I was told the following to a man:

“Save you life first, then you will figure it out”.

You have so many goals and dreams and you need your health to attain them.

Everyone has a different response to the surgery, and living is the only option!

I can say now that I totally endorse this position.

My wife, daughter, family and friends are grateful that I made the decision that I made.

Speaking of friends, the men I called who had gone through this were extremely generous with their time. They were always there for me and helped me through the first 3 weeks post op which were tough.

I had a great hospital and a great surgeon.

While this may sound obvious, many people go where they are comfortable.

This is a very, very critical operation where the surgeon and after care makes all the difference.

It has been 16 weeks since the operation and I am fully healed from the 5 incisions that were made (this was a robotic surgery).

The great news post op was that the tumor, after clinical analysis, was found to be a Gleason 7 which is much, much better and there appears to be no cancer beyond the prostate gland (none in the margins or lymph nodes)

My first post-op blood test came back last week and no cancer was present. These tests will go on for several years at intervals that are suggested by my urologist!

My hope in being so open about what I went through that if you know someone who is having prostate issues or you, the reader is having them, get checked and deal with it.

I am so grateful to the guys and especially my wife who has also been absolutely amazing, that helped me through this that I want to “give back’ to anyone who is also going through this whole difficult process.

Do not hesitate to write to me if you have any questions!

Save your life first, then figure it out.