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The Rest Is Noise

Still, better than McCartney

For me, Elvis Costello’s Il Sogno, which the Brooklyn Phil- harmonic played at Lincoln Center last night, was a scary blank. After half an hour, I did something I’ve never done in twelve years of reviewing concerts in New York: I got out a book and started to read. My brain needed something else to grasp on to — I felt like I was clawing the air and plummeting. It’s not that Costello is inept; the score actually showed a fair amount of skill, especially in the orchestration, which is usually the aspect of the art that newcomers master last (see Gershwin). It made a clean, lucid sound, whether in the faintly Stravinskyish neoclassical passages or in the jazzy vamps. But the content was bafflingly trite. On the radar screen of compositional authority, where Gershwin registers as a dominating blob, Costello would be lucky to show up as a blip. Portions of melodies wandered in constricted circles; sequences began unpromisingly and went nowhere. At its best, and this is not as big a compliment as it sounds, Il Sogno ranked with mediocre Sibelius — those purring interludes that the old man tossed off when he was trying to replicate the freak popularity of “Valse Triste.”

I’m all for flinging open the doors of "classical music" to pop sympathizers. Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, the BBC's new composer-in-residence, is probably the most promising boundary-smasher right now; his Bodysong has wonderful Bartokian passages for string quartet. Björk could make the same transition if she wanted to. Back in the day, Ellington and Gershwin made nonsense of the distinction between "composer" and "pop musician": they weren't beyond categories so much as categories melted down. Costello, too, has an all-devouring mind, as he showed in a virtuoso Vanity Fair article about what to listen to at different hours of the day. But he has nothing urgent to say with instruments alone. He’s simply demonstrating another facet of his cleverness. More power to him, I guess, although if I were a young composer struggling to get my music heard I’d be angry at Lincoln Center for fawning over him. Now, if it were a symphony by Prince, that might be another matter…

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Salon review

Fallen angel

Thumb-wrestling my way through a concert by the once great Elvis
Costello.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Thomas Bartlett

July 21, 2004 | Last Saturday I went to the Lincoln Center's Avery
Fisher Hall to see a real live fallen angel, the once great Elvis
Costello.
His debased status was made official last year with his marriage to
Diana Krall: It's simply incomprehensible to me that a great artist
could fall in love with someone so artistically vapid, even insidious ...
ergo, Costello must no longer be a great artist.

The first half of the program was devoted to a concert performance of
Costello's hour-long orchestral ballet, "Il Sogno," which it's hard to
view as anything but a hubristic vanity project. Jon Pareles, in the New
York Times, described the work in a few sentences while diplomatically
avoiding any pronouncements on its quality, but the New Yorker's Alex
Ross, writing in his excellent blog, didn't pull any punches: "I did
something I've never done in twelve years of reviewing concerts in New
York: I got out a book and started to read. My brain needed something
else to grasp on to -- I felt like I was clawing the air and
plummeting."

I feel his pain: My girlfriend and I, sans book and having read the
very dull program cover to cover, resorted to a lengthy thumb-war
tournament, much to the disgust of the rather starched-up couple
behind us. To be fair, while "Il Sogno" is boring, tremendously boring,
it's not bad. It's actually astonishingly competent for anyone's first
attempt at orchestral writing -- but it's the rare prodigy whose first
attempt at orchestral writing merits performance at the Avery Fisher
Hall.

The second half of the concert was devoted, mercifully, to Costello's
songs. He sang accompanied by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, as well
as the always excellent Greg Cohen on bass and Steve Nieve on
piano. Nieve was the keyboardist in Costello's band, the Attractions,
and has been his almost constant musical sidekick, but he is a truly
horrendous and tasteless piano accompanist, and should never be
allowed near a 9-foot grand. The songs were uneven -- many were
culled from the less-memorable corners of the Costello catalogue
("The Juliet Letters," "North"), while some of the classics sounded
uncomfortable being dragged into this world of strings, dragging
tempos and turgid piano arrangements.

But for all that, I was spellbound. Over the last decade, Costello has
developed, quite unexpectedly, into a great torch singer. His vibrato
can go a little bit overboard, sometimes even making it ambiguous what
note he's trying to sing, but his phrasing is both impeccable and
distinctive. And most important, I always believe him.

The Financial Times (London)

Music: Elvis Costello's 'Il Sogno'
By Martin Bernheimer
Published: July 21 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: July 21 2004 5:00

So-called classical music is playing only a minor role at this year's Lincoln Center Festival and the facsimiles thereof are not particularly reasonable. The most prominent shreds and patches emanate from an unlikely source: Elvis Costello.

On Saturday at Avery Fisher Hall, the nearly-50-year-old wunderkind from Paddington demonstrated his rocky-jazzy-funky-symphonic eclecticism with the US premiere of a suite entitled Il Sogno. Sprawling over an hour, it entails moderate ado about A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Costello produced the score for the Italian dance company Alterballetto in 2000, and a recording by Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra is due in September. Unaided by collaborators of any kind, as the annotation proclaims, the composer toiled on the project for 10 weeks, scrawling 200 pages in pencil. The result, divorced from the Shakespearean inspiration, sounds pretty, crafty and a tad innocuous. Think Bernstein, as in West Side Story, without the slush but also without the flair.

Having benefited from an escapade with the Brodsky Quartet, Costello is no primitive stranger in a sophisticated paradise. This is serious stuff, not to be confused with such ancient crossover misadventures as Jethro Tull's Switched-On Symphony and Frank Zappa's 200 Motels. Lean, clean and episodic, Il Sogno engages with dancerly syncopations, nifty modulations and melodic quirks.

To delineate contrasting universes, the composer provides mock-lofty music for the nobles, folkish naivety for the lower classes, swing for the fairies. The score rambles and rumbles sweetly, fits and spasms notwithstanding, and makes idiomatic use of the forces at hand. The orchestration remains essentially conventional, despite incidental use of progressive saxophone, cimbalom and a few (inaudibly) clapping hands. One recognises nods to Prokofiev here, to Gershwin there, and even traces of Mendelssohn. Still, enough original impulses remain to thwart the flattering spectre of imitation. If only those impulses were more brash, more brutal.

Urged onward if not upward by Brad Lubman, the Brooklyn Philharmonic demonstrated much apparent respect, not so much bravado. The crowd, which did not quite fill the 2,738-seat auditorium, applauded politely when the performance ended, then added a cheering ovation when Costello strolled out for a bow. After the interval the conquering hero returned for some overdressed arrangements of his greatest hits.