UTAH SYMPHONY, Peter Schickele & Robert Henderson conducting, Abravanel Hall, Jan. 23, 8 p.m.
In past years when Peter Schickele has told his audience some of the music hasn't arrived, he's usually been kidding.Not Saturday in Abravanel Hall, however, where the erstwhile "P.D.Q. Bach" specialist got a taste of his own medicine.
In this case it was the music for his own "Civilian Barber" Overture. That's what was listed in the program, and what he had brought props for. But what showed was the "Civilian Barber" Suite, which does not include the Overture.
So instead he kicked off this Utah Symphony pension concert by recounting how he and others came to take up the bassoon. ("I thought they said kazoo!" he recalled one surprised volunteer exclaiming.) Which paved the way for similar barbs directed at violists ("What's the difference between a viola and a trampoline? You take your shoes off when you jump on a trampoline."), conductors, pianists, even critics.
Obviously it takes a certain mindset to turn that kind of defeat into a humorous victory.
Would you have noticed, for example, that the name CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS, with the hypen turned on its side, can be anagrammatized into CELESTIS IS AN ANIMAL? Or that Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" can be metamorphosed into Schubert's "Marche Militaire" No. 1, with "Petrouchka" and "Till Eulenspiegel" tossed in for good measure?
The last came by way of Schickele's "Eine Kleine Nichtmusik," about as close as this "P.D.Q."-less program came to the spirit of that luminary. On the other hand, I suppose he was never far away in Schickele's "Bach Portrait," a fairly close parody of Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" that combines its themes with those of J.S. Bach, including extracts from the latter's verbose pleas for cash.
("When standing erect, he was 2 feet wide, and this is what he said.")
Robert Henderson was the conductor for this cheerful travesty, as he was for another classic example of theme-borrowing, Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals," with its tongue-in-cheek quotations from Berlioz, Offenbach, even Saint-Saens himself (in "Fossils").
The mother-and-daughter team of Irene and Christie Peery brought brilliance and sparkle to the duo-piano part, with J. Ryan Selberg turning in a soulful cello solo in "The Swan." And, demonstrating Schickele's genuine respect for the musicians he lampoons, even the wind players and xylophonist were moved out front for their solos.
Chief interest here, however, centered on Schickele's poems for the piece, less pithy than the famous Ogden Nash verses but no less clever. ("The turtle, however, likes to roam/Which is why he lives in a mobile home.")
Earlier he had given us a rare glimpse of his more serious side by way of his Elegy for String Orchestra, a piece of almost Shostakovichian sadness. But at the end, as at the beginning, it was the Schickele humor that saved the day, blunting the point of even some of the crueler jokes.
"Now mules are like critics. They both have long ears./And when they proceed to speak, here's what one hears."
For what it's worth, I laughed louder at that than had some of the violists.