San Diego Civic Youth Ballet Performs Excerpts from "The Nutcracker" at the Organ Pavilion November 13
by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
On Sunday, Novembe 13, my husband Charles and I got back from an organ concert in Balboa Park that was supposed to feature the dancers from the San Diego Civic Youth Ballet performing extracts from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (or should I write his name “Chaikovskii” the way the folks at the San Francisco State library did in the late 1970’s?). I was quite disappointed that San Diego civic organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez did not get to accompany the dancers from the console at the Organ Pavilion.; Instead they danced to a pre-recorded version of the orchestral score. I’m presuming this was so the young dancers would hear the music in the same tempi they’ve rehearsed to and wouldn’t get thrown by slight differences from a live accompaniment. Also coordinating the dancers with live organ would probably have taken extra rehearsal time, and no doubt neither the young dancers nor the Sprecles Organ people could accommodate that. But it was still a major disappointment to see these quite talented dancers and hear a record from the Organ Pavilion’s lousy P.A. system instead of the live music I was expecting to – and it was ironic, to say the least, that earlier in the concert Raúl had gone into diatribe mode and announced that anyone who tried to get to know a great piece of music through a record is like someone trying to get to know a woman through a photo of her. He opened the show with “Golliwog’s Cakewalk” from Debussy’s Children’s Corner suite for solo piano – I wondered if he programmed this because the main act on his concert was a children’s ballet (though in fact the dancers of the San Diego Civic Youth Ballet looked like teenagers to me, and unusually tall teenagers at that) or if he just played it becuase it’s one of his standards.
Next, as part of his weekly dose of Bach (yes, Raúl actually made Bach’s music sound like medicine in his stage raps; it’s the kind of presentation that’s more likely to turn kids off to classical music rather than on), Raúl played the Prelude and Fugue in C minor, BWV 542/ The program only mentioned a fugue, but Raúl played both parts of the piece – and played them beautifully. As much as I caon’t stand his stage persona, there’s no denying that he really knows hos way around the organ. Raúl introduced the piece by saying Bach wrote it as an audition piece for one of his sons, only “the son was really into beer” and therefore didn’t get the job he was presumably applying for with Bach Vater’s piece as his audition music. In fact, at least four of Bach’s sons – Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Carl Phiipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Christoph Friedemann Bach, and Johann Christian Bach – became major composers in their own right. (Johann Christian became known as the “London Bach” because he settled there, and he wrote an opera called Temistocle which was a major influence on young Mozart.) Raúl had planned to play the same medley of two Glenn Miller hits, “Moonlight Serenade” and “in the Mood,” that I had disliked so intensely during last week’s concert, only he called the Civic Youth Ballet dancers at that point instead and said he’d see how long their performance took and play the Miller selections afterwards if he still had the time. The San Diego Civic Youth Ballet’s performance surprised me not only because they were accompanied by recorded music instead of Raúl playing live, but also because there wasn’t a narrator connecting the pieces and explaining how they fit together in the story of the ballet.
In fact there was no narration at all, which was quite fine by me on one level but meant that the episodes seemed disconnected, just a bunch of highly talented dancers performing bits that had no apparent connection with each other. (Then again, at least part of that is built into Tchaikovsky ‘s score:Tchaikovsky and his choreographer, Marius Petipa, pretty much finished the plot at the end of act one and filled out the second act with so-called “national dances” representing various countries.) The music included some movements familiar from the Nutcracker Suite – “Chinese Dance,” “Dance of the Reed Flutes” (performed here as “Dance of the Shepherdess”), “Russian Dance,” “Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy” and “Waltz of the Flowers” – as well as movements that aren’t: the “Party Scene March” (not the famous March that’s the second movement of the suite), “Dolls’ Dance,” “Clara’s Dance” and “Spanish Dance.” The dancers were almost all teenagers, which means theyre at the cusp of the ideal age to dance ballet, the 20’s,and they were almost all female. Remember George Balanchine’s famous comment, “Ballet is woman,” though one genuinely hot, sexy young man came out strong at the end of the “Russian Dance” clad in a red shirt and black pants and evincing a take-charge attitude I liked. After the dancers were finished Raúl returned to the stage for his two Glenn Miller pieces and, since the program was running short, a surprise addition: the opening Allegro movement from Charles-Marie Widor’s Organ Symphony No. 6. It’s the kind of loud, bombastic music that shows Raúl off at his best, For the last piece on his program Raúl played the U.S. national anthem – which for some reason he attributed to Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) even though Key only wrote the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and had nothing to do with writing the music. The music was from an old British college drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven” and the composer generally credited with it was John Stafford Smith (1750-1836). Also the title of Key’s lyric was originally “Defense of Fort McHenry”!
On Sunday, Novembe 13, my husband Charles and I got back from an organ concert in Balboa Park that was supposed to feature the dancers from the San Diego Civic Youth Ballet performing extracts from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (or should I write his name “Chaikovskii” the way the folks at the San Francisco State library did in the late 1970’s?). I was quite disappointed that San Diego civic organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez did not get to accompany the dancers from the console at the Organ Pavilion.; Instead they danced to a pre-recorded version of the orchestral score. I’m presuming this was so the young dancers would hear the music in the same tempi they’ve rehearsed to and wouldn’t get thrown by slight differences from a live accompaniment. Also coordinating the dancers with live organ would probably have taken extra rehearsal time, and no doubt neither the young dancers nor the Sprecles Organ people could accommodate that. But it was still a major disappointment to see these quite talented dancers and hear a record from the Organ Pavilion’s lousy P.A. system instead of the live music I was expecting to – and it was ironic, to say the least, that earlier in the concert Raúl had gone into diatribe mode and announced that anyone who tried to get to know a great piece of music through a record is like someone trying to get to know a woman through a photo of her. He opened the show with “Golliwog’s Cakewalk” from Debussy’s Children’s Corner suite for solo piano – I wondered if he programmed this because the main act on his concert was a children’s ballet (though in fact the dancers of the San Diego Civic Youth Ballet looked like teenagers to me, and unusually tall teenagers at that) or if he just played it becuase it’s one of his standards.
Next, as part of his weekly dose of Bach (yes, Raúl actually made Bach’s music sound like medicine in his stage raps; it’s the kind of presentation that’s more likely to turn kids off to classical music rather than on), Raúl played the Prelude and Fugue in C minor, BWV 542/ The program only mentioned a fugue, but Raúl played both parts of the piece – and played them beautifully. As much as I caon’t stand his stage persona, there’s no denying that he really knows hos way around the organ. Raúl introduced the piece by saying Bach wrote it as an audition piece for one of his sons, only “the son was really into beer” and therefore didn’t get the job he was presumably applying for with Bach Vater’s piece as his audition music. In fact, at least four of Bach’s sons – Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Carl Phiipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Christoph Friedemann Bach, and Johann Christian Bach – became major composers in their own right. (Johann Christian became known as the “London Bach” because he settled there, and he wrote an opera called Temistocle which was a major influence on young Mozart.) Raúl had planned to play the same medley of two Glenn Miller hits, “Moonlight Serenade” and “in the Mood,” that I had disliked so intensely during last week’s concert, only he called the Civic Youth Ballet dancers at that point instead and said he’d see how long their performance took and play the Miller selections afterwards if he still had the time. The San Diego Civic Youth Ballet’s performance surprised me not only because they were accompanied by recorded music instead of Raúl playing live, but also because there wasn’t a narrator connecting the pieces and explaining how they fit together in the story of the ballet.
In fact there was no narration at all, which was quite fine by me on one level but meant that the episodes seemed disconnected, just a bunch of highly talented dancers performing bits that had no apparent connection with each other. (Then again, at least part of that is built into Tchaikovsky ‘s score:Tchaikovsky and his choreographer, Marius Petipa, pretty much finished the plot at the end of act one and filled out the second act with so-called “national dances” representing various countries.) The music included some movements familiar from the Nutcracker Suite – “Chinese Dance,” “Dance of the Reed Flutes” (performed here as “Dance of the Shepherdess”), “Russian Dance,” “Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy” and “Waltz of the Flowers” – as well as movements that aren’t: the “Party Scene March” (not the famous March that’s the second movement of the suite), “Dolls’ Dance,” “Clara’s Dance” and “Spanish Dance.” The dancers were almost all teenagers, which means theyre at the cusp of the ideal age to dance ballet, the 20’s,and they were almost all female. Remember George Balanchine’s famous comment, “Ballet is woman,” though one genuinely hot, sexy young man came out strong at the end of the “Russian Dance” clad in a red shirt and black pants and evincing a take-charge attitude I liked. After the dancers were finished Raúl returned to the stage for his two Glenn Miller pieces and, since the program was running short, a surprise addition: the opening Allegro movement from Charles-Marie Widor’s Organ Symphony No. 6. It’s the kind of loud, bombastic music that shows Raúl off at his best, For the last piece on his program Raúl played the U.S. national anthem – which for some reason he attributed to Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) even though Key only wrote the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and had nothing to do with writing the music. The music was from an old British college drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven” and the composer generally credited with it was John Stafford Smith (1750-1836). Also the title of Key’s lyric was originally “Defense of Fort McHenry”!
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