You Say Goodbye, I Say Cello
As the crowd headed home after Friday night’s superb opening of LA Opera’s “Porgy and Bess,” I stopped by Kendall’s for a drink and ran into John Walz. It didn’t take more than a couple of iced teas for the opera’s principal cellist to get a few things off his tuxedoed chest.
Baroque music, for starters, has been “hijacked by fundamentalists” (LA’s own Musica Angelica, for example), whose dogmatic, “earlier-than-thou” approach to music extends not just to period instruments, but how they should be played. The growing acceptance of these “mannered and over-the-top” specialists kept Walz out of the orchestra for LA Opera’s production of Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea.”
As for “Porgy,” it’s proven his favorite score to play this season, with the orchestration “a work of genius.”
The LA Opera’s season will close with Placido Domingo in “Luisa Fernanda.” Does Domingo still have his chops? While the tenor isn’t the man he was 20 years ago, Walz says, he’s “the best 67-year-old singer around. He sounds strong, not like an old man.”
Next season the company will present Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.” The first time Walz had to play it, he was dreading the five-hour opera. But he says as soon as it begins it lulls him into a trance “and you don’t even look at your watch.”
Walz is a popular choice in Hollywood for work on film scores, having performed on over 700 soundtracks, most recently the summer blockbusters “Spider Man 3″ and “Pirates of the Carribean 3.” Though the work is tedious (despite the fact that what you hear in a film’s final cut was often sight-read by the orchestra), it’s lucrative, often bringing $1,000 a day, plus royalties.
Speaking of money, Walz was recently asked to join the London Philharmonic, but is unsure about having to work twice as hard for half the money in a city that costs twice as much.
Walz ended our chat with a few remarks about one of LA’s leading music critics. Whom does he find a “pretentious snob” ready to praise anything avant-garde while bemoaning anything light and melodic?
Two guesses.
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In terms of the early music scene, Musica Angelica seems to be more middle of the road than “fundamentalist”. There are probably a few groups that fit this description, but I don’t think you have a bone to pick with Musica Angelica. I think many would agree that a performance of the Coronation of Poppea on period instruments is much preferred to a few horrible “updated” versions that are available for rental.
A few years ago the LA Opera hired Ligeti to rescore Poppea with modern instruments and its too bad he was too sick to ever complete his “new” orchestration. A worthy project that still has is probably needed.
Oh, “Tristan and Isolde”! One never stops to think these things may be far more tedious to musicians in the pit of hell. Needless to say, I’ve never been a big fan of the Wagnerian. I’ve had more fun watching my washing machine on the Rinse cycle than even contemplating the plot of the Ring cycle.
When I think of the opera:
If it has to Richard, let it be Strauss. If it has to be Wagner… oh, God, please just don’t let it be Wagner.
Try the prelude to “Meistersinger,” 10 minutes of music as beautiful as you’ll find.
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