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Elvis Costello The Classicist: His Aim Is True

By Terry Teachout
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, July 19, 2004; Page C01

NEW YORK -- Rock legend Elvis Costello has been flirting avidly with classical music in recent years, collaborating with Anne Sofie von Otter and the Brodsky Quartet to striking effect. Now he's pulled a much bigger rabbit out of his seemingly bottomless hat: "Il Sogno," an hour-long ballet score for symphony orchestra.

Based on Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Il Sogno" was composed in 2000 for Aterballeto, an Italian dance troupe, and received its North American premiere on Saturday at Avery Fisher Hall as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. (A recording will be released by DGG in September.) Not only did Costello write it without assistance, he orchestrated it as well, and though the Brooklyn Philharmonic, conducted by Brad Lubman, was conspicuously underrehearsed, the performance was decent enough to leave no doubt that Costello knows what he's doing. The scoring isn't perfect -- the middle register is cluttered and thick-sounding at times, and the vibraphone is used to sugary excess -- but it's perfectly competent.

That alone made my jaw drop. Even Duke Ellington relied on professional orchestrators when writing for symphony orchestra, while Paul McCartney hired so many collaborators to help him produce the embarrassingly bloated "Standing Stone" that I described it at the time of its 1997 premiere as "the first as-told-to symphony." What's more, "Il Sogno" ("The Dream" in Italian), though it rambles a bit, is more than just a long string of songlike cameos placed end to end: Costello has channeled his thematic material into simple, formal structures that he uses in the disciplined manner of a bona fide classical composer.

Am I surprised? Totally. But if any rocker could pull off such an improbable feat, it's Elvis Costello, whose musical curiosity has always been boundless. What's more, "Il Sogno" doesn't sound like anybody else (except for a couple of lyrical passages that reminded me, logically enough, of Sir Michael Tippett's "The Midsummer Marriage"). It's not cut-rate Prokofiev or Bernstein, but a lively, ingratiating piece of mainstream modernism, with decorous snippets of symphonic rock and jazz thrown in from time to time to spice things up. If anything, it's too polite: Costello was clearly on his best musical behavior when he wrote it, and I'm sure he felt he had something to prove to all the "legit" musicians who took it for granted that no mere rock star could bring off so ambitious an undertaking.

Well, he proved it. Not only does "Il Sogno" work, but it stands up pretty well to the inevitable comparison with George Gershwin's concert music. Unlike Gershwin's wonderfully concise Concerto in F and "An American in Paris," it goes on too long (Costello should give some thought to spinning off a five- or six-movement suite) and lacks the high melodic profile that could have made it truly memorable. Even so, "Il Sogno" is more than good enough to recall Irving Berlin's envious remark that Gershwin was "the only songwriter I know who became a composer." If he chooses to, I have no doubt that Elvis Costello can do the same thing.

Mind you, Costello doesn't need to write large-scale orchestral works to be taken seriously as an artist. Rock has produced no better songwriter. But if he really wants to set up shop as a part-time classical composer, he'll need to polish his craft still further. After the unexpected success of "Rhapsody in Blue," Gershwin toiled for 11 years and ended up with "Porgy and Bess." Is Costello in it for the long haul? Or will "Il Sogno" turn out to be a fluke? I hope not.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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MUSIC REVIEW | LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL
Elvis Costello's 'Fondest Wish' Comes True
By JON PARELES

Published: July 19, 2004

There were only a few constants in Elvis Costello's three concerts for the Lincoln Center Festival last week. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights at Avery Fisher Hall, he wore black suits and played guitar; an unobtrusive music stand held his complex lyrics. Steve Nieve, who has been in Mr. Costello's bands since 1977, played keyboards at all three shows. Beyond that, everything was in flux: styles and structures, meanings and moods.

Mr. Costello is ceaselessly curious about music. He is inquisitive enough not just to listen widely, but to learn the makings of every idiom that moves him, from lieder to New Orleans rhythm and blues. In the three nights at Lincoln Center he was a crooner, a howler, a swinger, a brooder, an orchestral composer and a guitar twanger. Mr. Costello recognizes pop genres and what can be expressed by their particularities, but he refuses to be slotted into them. "This is my fondest wish," he sang near the end of Saturday's concert, "to go where I cannot be captured."

He delved into obscure corners of his catalog, tacitly demonstrating that some of his overlooked songs deserve to be heard. The concerts anticipated Mr. Costello's 50th birthday, on Aug. 25, and the lyrics were full of adult concerns: disillusionment, regrets, the shape of history, the persistence of folly. But there was more pleasure than bitterness in the music, if only the pleasures of clarity and distillation: of finding the turns of phrase, melody and dynamics that made some bleak insight linger. Mr. Costello, who married the singer Diana Krall last year, is still a master of songs about romantic entropy and breakups as parting shots, and he had plenty of them during the three concerts.

Mr. Costello's music has long veered between American and European polarities: primal, stomping riffs versus elaborate harmonies and florid ornament. It's a tension that was built into his bands, the Attractions and now the Imposters, with Mr. Nieve's quasi-Romantic decorations surrounding Mr. Costello's cutting guitar. For the three concerts he chose ensembles that can do some shape-shifting themselves.

On Tuesday he was backed by the Metropole Orkest, a Dutch group, conducted by Jim McNeely, that augments a big band with a string section. It was equally at home with a hard-swinging Charles Mingus tune and with slow-motion ballads; for a few rockers the orchestra simply worked as a hefty horn section. It was the most varied concert of the three; in one stretch Mr. Costello followed a stately tribute to Henry Purcell, "Put Away Forbidden Playthings," with a bluesy rocker, "Dust," and then a shimmering ballad, "My Flame Burns Blue," based on Billy Strayhorn's "Blood Count." With the Metropole Orkest, he came close to becoming a more ruthless Frank Sinatra.

On Saturday the Brooklyn Philharmonic, conducted by Brad Lubman, played Mr. Costello's hourlong ballet score, "Il Sogno" ("The Dream," written for a dance adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream") and then provided an orchestral penumbra for a core trio of Mr. Costello, Mr. Nieve and Greg Cohen on bass. "Il Sogno" is a rhapsodic work, following the plot's juxtapositions of characters by switching among courtly pomp, folkish lilt, sweeping romantic lines and jazzy swing, along with eerie sustained interludes. As tuneful themes recurred and intertwined, it was easy to imagine "Il Sogno" as the latter-day descendant of ballet scores: a film soundtrack.

While Mr. Costello has now proved his skill at writing songs with labyrinthine turns and chromatic kinks and he has become a convincing ballad singer, it's still in his rock songs that the cerebral and the visceral connect best. Thursday's concert unleashed the Imposters, his rock band, with two members of his punk-vintage band the Attractions (Mr. Nieve and Pete Thomas on drums) plus Davey Faragher on bass.

Mr. Costello and the Imposters played most of their next album, "The Delivery Man" (due in September), which is steeped in Southern Americana from Memphis soul to country ballads, and which sketches characters with terse empathy. They also went barreling through older songs from "I Hope You're Happy Now" to "Pump It Up," and let Mr. Costello roar and twang through a bluesy, extended version of "Love That Burns." He may chafe at the limitations of rock, but it's still his best outlet.

Mr. Costello can't do everything equally well. Some of his more complex songs are too attenuated; sometimes he accentuates details until they obscure the whole. But he's no longer overreaching by much, and his ambition trumps professional complacency anytime.

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Variety

Elvis Costello's Il Sogno

Sat Jul 17, 8:12 PM ET

David Sprague, STAFF

Avery Fisher Hall, New York; 2,738 seats; $65 top

Presented by Lincoln Center Festival 2004. Reviewed July 17, 2004.

Brooklyn Philharmonic conducted by Brad Lubman.

Elvis Costello has never been shy about collaborating, throwing his lot in with folks as diverse as Paul McCartney , Burt Bacharach and the Brodsky Quartet. The onetime angry young man really swings for the fences, however, on his latest "collaboration" -- transliterating Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as a symphonic piece entitled "Il Sogno."

The piece, which made its North American bow on the final night of Costello's three-date stand at Lincoln Center, was at once remarkably dense and wittily playful. Commissioned by an Italian dance troupe, "Il Sogno" revels in physicality -- percussion, including syncopated clapping worthy of a big fat Greek wedding, plays a large role, as does a forceful celeste -- but not to the point where it demands terpsichorean accompaniment.

Costello had virtually no trouble converting the mastery of character development he's shown in his pop lyrics into orchestration, assigning each set of primary actors a distinct sonic personality. Opening in the royal court, the piece immediately takes on a romantic tenor melodramatic enough to suit a Douglas Sirk heroine, with sighing strings and teasing woodwinds at the fore. An abrupt but apt mood shift is signaled by the emergence of a brass-led counterpoint bursting with the sort of feisty jazz-age energy once employed by Darius Milhaud.

The two diametrically opposed styles -- leavened now and again by gentle Celtic interludes that relied heavily on the dulcimer playing of Lawrence Kaptain -- didn't exactly fuse, but that clearly was not Costello's intention. For the duration of the three-movement, 70-minute piece, the musicians kept up a vigorous dialogue, hemming and hawing, then breaking into lustful roars.

Now and again, an individual player would materialize with something of a monologue -- first violinist Laura Hamilton's regal dissertation, double bassist Greg Cohen's rhythmic leg-pulling -- but "Il Sogno" is categorically an ensemble piece. Conductor Brad Lubman maintained that tem-perament beautifully: He let the nuances of Costello's writing emerge, making for a surprisingly profound concert experience.

After an intermission, Costello and longtime pianist Steve Nieve joined the Philharmonic for a brief set of his pop material, most of it gathered from the more shadowy reaches of his catalog. Highlights included "I Want to Vanish" and a wrenching "She's Pulling Out the Pin."

"Il Sogno," as recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, will be released by Deutsche Grammophon in September.

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-- Apoteosis de Elvis Costello en el Lincoln Center de Nueva York
ALFONSO ARMADA, CORRESPONSAL/

ÁNGEL DE ANTONIO Elvis Costello cumple veinticinco años de carrera

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NUEVA YORK. El cantante y compositor británico Elvis Costello coronó el sábado en el Lincoln Center de Nueva York tres noches verdaderamente apoteósicas, en las que recorrió todas sus fuentes de inspiración artística, desde el rock más acerado al pop más lírico y ambicioso, desde las melodías para big-bang a la música sinfónica, y dejó la impresión, entre ovaciones y gritos de arrobo, de que está muy lejos de haber tocado techo.

Fiel a su tradición de rendir homenaje «a algunos de los más influyentes artistas de nuestra época», el Festival del Lincoln Center vendió todo el papel para las tres incursiones en la constelación de un músico que acaba de cumplir 25 años en la carretera. Abrió boca a lo grande el martes con el debut en Estados Unidos de la Netherlands Metropole Orchestra, con sus 52 intérpretes y su habilidad para sortear los escollos del jazz, el pop, la música para películas y la clásica. Acompañado por Steve Nieve, el pianista que escolta a este stajanovista de la música desde su primer «elepé», aquel lejano «My aim is true», de 1977, Costello y la formidable orquesta brillaron con luz propia con arreglos para big band y piezas más íntimas. En una asombrosa mezcla de Sinatra, Tony Bennet y But Bacharach (con quien Costello grabó en 1998 «Painted from memory»), el hijo del trompetista de jazz de clase obrera demostró por qué no le tiene miedo a nada. Reinventándose a sí mismo con cada nuevo disco de una carrera, que está lejos de concluir, y una excelente química con la orquesta, el público deliró cuando Costello reclamó su guitarra eléctrica para «Dust» y ante las explosivas versiones de «Watching the detectives» y, sobre todo, «Almost blue», como propina.

Euforia de los fans

Si el jueves fue el día en que los acomodadores del Avery Fisher Hall se las vieron y se las desearon para contener la euforia de los fans que se negaban a seguir sentados el recorrido que Costello hizo con The Imposters durante 145 minutos por buena parte de su repertorio, y el viernes volvió a probar su increíble resistencia y vitalidad, y clavó «Love that burns» y «Peace, love and understanding», el sábado acabó de darle la razón a un crítico que pidió para Declan McManus una placa que rece «Hombre del Renacimiento». Muy lejos queda aquel furioso rokero que decía que las únicas emociones que podía entender eran «la venganza y la culpa». La Orquesta Filarmónica de Brooklyn, con Brad Lubman al frente, interpretó durante una hora y diez minutos el primer trabajo sinfónico de Elvis Costello: la partitura que con lápiz y papel y durante diez agotadoras semanas escribió a partir del shakespeareano «Sueño de una noche de verano» para una compañía italiana de ballet. «Il sogno», que saldrá a la venta el próximo otoño en una grabación de la Orquesta Sinfónica de Londres, es una admirable vuelta de tuerca en su carrera. Con resonancias de Ravel, Chaikovski, Bernstein y Duke Ellington, el Costello compositor sinfónico mezcla estilos en la coctelera de su cabeza con una libertad y falta de prejuicios admirable, lo que a veces le lleva a incongruencias y a que la masa sinfónica, de una brillantez innegable, caiga en momentos fáciles que recuerdan a ilustraciones para una película del agente 007, aunque sí evidencia que no ha perdido de vista la intención de la obra: ilustrar, acompañar y ensalzar un ballet. Pero está lleno de vida, color y energía.

Con el público tan entregado como la propia Filarmónica de Broolkyn y su director, la segunda parte sirvió para que Costello interpretara algunas versiones para orquesta de algunos de sus temas que ya forman parte del pop clásico. Otra vez con su fiel Steve Nieve, responsable de algunos de los arreglos, al piano, y el propio Costello con la guitarra acústica, canciones como «Useless beauty» o, una vez más, «Almost blue», convirtieron el gigantesco teatro en una caverna íntima en la que el antiguo joven airado dejó claro que a sus 49 años es un hombre feliz, un artista en estado de gracia.

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Google translation

NEW YORK. The singer and British composer Elvis Costello crowned Saturday in Lincoln Center of New York three nights truely tremendous, in which she crossed all his sources of artistic inspiration, from the acierated rock more to pop the more ambitious lírico and, from melodías for big-bang to symphonic music, and left the impression, between ovaciones and shouts of ecstasy, of which she is very far from having touched ceiling. Faithful to his tradition to pay tribute "to some of the most influential artists of our time", the Festival of Lincoln Center sold all the paper for the three incursions in the constellation of a musician who finishes turning 25 years in the highway. He opened mouth to great Tuesday with the debut in the United States of the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra, with its 52 interpreters and their ability to draw for the stumbling blocks of the jazz, the pop one, music for films and the classic one. Accompanied by Steve Snow, the pianista that escort to this stajanovista of music from its first "elepe '", that distant "My aim is true", of 1977, Costello and the formidable orchestra shone with own light with adjustments for big band and more intimate pieces. In amazing mixture of Sinatra, Tony Bennet and But Bacharach (with who Costello recorded in 1998 "Painted from memory"), the son of the trompetista of jazz of working class demonstrated why he is not scared to him to anything. Reinventando to itself with each new disc of a race, that is far from concluding, and an excellent chemistry with the orchestra, the public was delirious when Costello demanded its electrical guitar for "Dust" and before the explosive versions of "Watching the detectives" and, mainly, "Almost blue", as he offers. Euphoria of fans If Thursday were the day in which the ushers of the Avery Fisher Hall saw them and were desired you to contain the euphoria of fans which they refused to follow seated the route that Costello did with The Imposters during 145 minutes by good part of its repertoire, and Friday returned to prove their incredible resistance and vitality, and nailed "Love that burns" and "Peace, love and understanding", Saturday finished giving the reason to a critic who requested for Declan McManus a plate that says "Man of the Renaissance". Very far it is left that furious rokero that said that the only emotions that could understand they were "the revenge and the fault". The Filarmónica Orchestra of Brooklyn, with Brad Lubman to the front, interpreted during one hour and ten minutes the first symphonic work of Elvis Costello: the score that with pencil and paper and during ten exhausting weeks wrote from the shakespeareano "Dream of one night of summer" for an Italian company of ballet. "Il sogno", that will on sale leave the next autumn in a recording the Symphony orchestra of London, is an admirable return of nut in its race. With resonances of Ravel, Chaikovski, Bernstein and Duke Ellington, the Costello symphonic composer mixture styles in the coctelera of its head with a freedom and admirable lack of prejudices, which sometimes takes to incongruencias and to that the symphonic mass, of an undeniable brilliance, falls at easy moments that they remember to illustrations for a film of agent 007, although yes evidence that is lost of Vista no the intention of the work: to illustrate, to accompany and to praise a ballet. But he is full of life, color and energy. With the public so given as the own Filarmónica de Broolkyn and its director, the second part served so that Costello interpreted some versions for orchestra of some of its subjects that already comprise pop of the classic one. Again with their Steve faithful Snow, person in charge of some of the adjustments, to the piano, and the own Costello with the acoustic guitar, songs like "Useless beauty" or, once again, "Almost blue", turned the gigantic theater an intimate cavern in which the old angry young person made clear that to his 49 years he is a happy man, an artist in grace state.

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New York Daily News
Saturday, as the Festival ended its Elvis Costello retrospective, the Brooklyn Philharmonic under Brad Lubman gave the North America Premiere of "Il Sogno," Costello's first symphonic work. Also, Costello sang some of his pop standards with full orchestral backup.

"Il Sogno," a version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," was commissioned by an Italian dance company and would probably make a stronger impression if we saw it as an accompaniment to ballet rather than music standing on its own.

Nevertheless the score is full of delights, sometimes sounding like vintage jazz, other times like vintage Hollywood. Its most notable feature may be Costello's understanding of the riches of a symphony orchestra. One can only look forward to his future explorations of this great resource.

Originally published on July 19, 2004

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Costello the composer
Popular singer turns a page with first orchestral work
Monday, July 19, 2004
BY BRADLEY BAMBARGER
Star-Ledger Staff
NEW YORK -- For pop musicians, there is a fine line between artistic ambitions and pretension. What enables one to earn the tag of intrepid, while another is labeled a poser?

A long litany of rock artists have sought to mature gracefully by composing "classical" music, whether or not they could actually orchestrate or even read music on paper. Unlike some of his illustrious peers, Elvis Costello took the trouble to learn skills that he could easily have done without as a successful singer/songwriter.

Costello's first orchestral work, the ballet score "Il Sogno" ('The Dream'), garnered its North American premiere on Saturday as the final panel in the Lincoln Center Festival's triptych devoted to his versatile muse and marking his 50th birthday. (On previous nights, he sang in front of a jazz orchestra and with his rock combo, the Imposters.) The piece brims with color and charm of a kind wholly distinct from Costello's pop music or even his classically oriented song cycle, "The Juliet Letters."

Although episodic and a bit long at about an hour (but then many collections of dance cues seem that way), "Il Sogno" was also unflaggingly melodious, rhythmically vital and -- most impressive -- orchestrated with kaleidoscopic vividness. Reading music is one thing; orchestration is quite another (with most rockers who compose orchestral works ceding that all-important job to trained experts). Costello seems to have taken to this new art with as much panache as he did Americana, torch songs or other genre offshoots from his initial vein of combustible, if highly literate, rock'n'roll.

Commissioned for an Italian ballet company's adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Costello's score evokes the material's bittersweet humor and magical air. His soundprint alternated between Stravinsky's commedia dell'arte pastiche "Pulcinella" and the impressionistic big-band charts of Gil Evans. Throughout, there were beguiling sonic touches from bell-like tuned percussion, cascading cimbalom, arching trumpet and swinging trap drums, as well as much mellow-toned saxophone.

The Brooklyn Philharmonic under conductor Brad Lubman performed the jazzy parts with plenty of insouciance, shifting idiomatic gears between those and the more "classical" passages with aplomb. A younger, more rock 'n' roll crowd than usual for Avery Fisher Hall, the audience seemed thrilled, or at least genuinely impressed, by the fresh, tuneful "Il Sogno." But the reception for the concert's second half -- featuring Costello singing a brace of his songs with the orchestra, plus his longtime pianist, Steve Nieve, and double-bassist Greg Cohen -- was rapturous.

In spectacular voice, from sotto voce to stentorian, Costello sang several songs that he orchestrated for his recent ballad album, "North." The one vintage number Costello brought out was "Almost Blue," which has become something of a modern standard, interpreted by more singers than just his new wife, star jazz chanteuse Diana Krall. The laconic Richard Harvey arrangement of "The Birds Will Still Be Singing," from "The Juliet Letters," was another highlight.

Costello also aired songs from his next Imposters album, which -- further illustrating his multi-faceted ways -- will come out the same September day as a Deutsche Grammophon disc featuring "Il Sogno." The concluding item brought out another side of the English artist -- that of the showman. He turned off the microphone to voice his Nino Rota-like waltz "Couldn't Call It Unexpected #4," leading the audience in a wordless singalong at the end. It was, to use an adjective rarely applied to Costello in his days as an "angry young man," enchanting.

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'DREAM' COME TRUE FOR COSTELLO

By SHIRLEY FLEMING

July 19, 2004 -- IT'S impossible to pigeon- hole Elvis Costello, and the Lincoln Center Festival has been smart enough not even to try.

The diverse talents of this very popular singer/songwriter/composer, just turning 50, could not really be contained in a single program, so the festival gave him three last week.

The Netherlands' jazz ensemble Metropole Orkest backed him in the first concert and his own trio, the Imposters, collaborated in the second.

The mini-fest came to its climax on Saturday as a tumultuous audience welcomed him to Avery Fisher Hall for the U.S. premiere of his first full-length symphonic work, "Il Sogno" (The Dream), performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

The work started two years ago as a ballet score for an Italian company's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and proved rich enough to expand into an hour-long, three-movement piece that takes musical glances at various situations in Shakespeare's play.

The emphasis is on "quick." In the attempt to capture the spirit of no fewer than 21 incidents from the play, "The Dream" is inevitably fragmented, and often a particularly promising idea got nipped off just as you started to become absorbed in it.

But say this: Costello knows his way around an orchestra. The writing is full of color and variety, and solo instruments get their fair share of the spotlight — a beguiling trumpet song in the second movement still lingers.

There are all sorts of style references — luxuriantly romantic passages, outbursts of Ivesian exuberance, sudden turns into Latin rhythms, sturdy marches, a couple of hints of Elizabethan ballad. The work goes all over the place, but it's a fun trip.

IL SOGNO (THE DREAM)
Symphonic work from Elvis Costello at Avery Fisher Hall