Peter Schickele
(Bassoonist, maverick, composer, Peter Schickele is at it again with yet another P.D.Q. Bach performance! The following is a review from the February 12, 1980 Columbus (Ohio) Citizen-Journal by Rosemary Curtin Hite who, prior to her retirement from this newspaper was not only a local music critic but an active performing bassoonist as well. Ed.)
Bassoonists' Antics 'Baroque' Audience Up
You've heard of Ravel's "Piano Concerto for the Left Hand," haven't you? You think that was something? Well, what do you think about "Bassoon Concerto for the Left Hand"?
Crazy, right? Everybody knows it takes two hands, 10 fingers, to play the bassoon, and even that's about three fingers too few.
Everybody except Peter Schickele, that is. If the discoverer and chief interpreter of the infamous baroque composer, P.D.Q. Bach, doesn't have two hands available for playing the bassoon, he just makes do with whatever fingers are available.
And if it happens that the pianist scheduled to accompany bassoonist Schickele hasn't shown up, then the intrepid Peter accompanies himself, bassoon in one hand, piano in the other.
That was the situation Monday night at Mershon Auditorium, where Schickele and the Semi-Pro Musica Antiqua were appearing on the Variety Series. Schickele did indeed play the bassoon one-handed, making virtuosic use of the six notes available to the left hand, while plunking out various irrelevant doodles on the piano.
He also bounced on the keyboard with a part of the anatomy unusual even for Baroque music-making, whacked a few notes with the bell of the bassoon and gave a few good thumps with the butt (of the bassoon, that is!)
The bassoon will never be the same!
The "Abassoonata in F major (S888)" was only one of the insanely comic routines Schickele offered the packed house. First, and almost best, was the now-famous entrance from the balcony--over the rail--the mad dash onstage and the winded introductory speech.
Schickele's jibes at the academic world (He's a professor at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hinkle--or was it Northern South Dakota at Heckel?) were devoured with glee by the large student and faculty contingent. He blamed his persistent unearthing of P.D.Q. Bach castoffs on USNDH's "publish or perish" policy.
Missing David Oei finally showed in running clothes and joined with Schickele and "bargain counter tenor" John Ferrante in "Twelve Quite Heavenly Songs", a musical treatise on the sign of the Zodiac that made use of every convention in baroque music to hysterical effect, and gave pianist Oei opportunity to display his incredible versatility and keyboard technique.
Columbus native William Walters, a veteran with the Schickele forces, has turned into the best deadpan straight man going. In "Goldbrick Variations (S 14)" he did a marvelous bit with lighting arrangements for duo-pianists Oei and Schickele that roused joy in the heart of any stage manager faced with the vindictive behavior or inanimate matter.
A slide show to end all slide shows, and "Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice (S 2n- 1)" brought this incomparable nonsense to a rib-aching, howling close.
Lynette Cohen
Bassoon Faculty, University of Akron, Akron, Ohio 12/16/81. Program included Sonata No. 2 in D Major by J.S. Bach; Quartet in D minor from Tafelmusik by G.P. Telemann, Sonata Op. 168 by Camille Saint-Saëns, and Sonatine by Alexander Tansman.
Sandra L. MacDonald
Candidate for the Artist Diploma, New England Conservatory, Boston, Mass. 1/24/82 in a "Concert of Bassoon Concerti." Program included the Concerto No. 17 (F. VIII) by Antonio Vivaldi, the Suite-Concertino, Op 16 by Ermano Wolf-Ferrari and the Concerto, K. 191, by Mozart. Assisting orchestra was conducted by Eiji Oue.
James Mendenhall
Bassoon, Recorder and Curtal, Faculty, Brandon University, Manitoba, 2/2/82. Program included: Sonata in G, Op. 2, No. 11 by J.B. Loeillet and "den Nachtegael" by Jacob van Eyck, played on recorder, Divisions on "The Carman's Whistle" by Daniel Purcell and Fantasia V by Bartolomeo de Selma y Salverde on alto and bass curtal; and the Sonata K. 292 by Mozart, Pentacycle for bassoon and four channel tape by William Allgood, and the Variations et Rondeau, Op. 57 by Kalliwoda on the bassoon. (Jim was on sabbatical leave in London last year where he studied bassoon with William Waterhouse as well as historical instrument making. The alto and bass curtals used on his program were ones he made himself.)
Katherine Thompson
Graduate bassoon recital, College-Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1/25/82. Program included: Concerto in Bb Major, F. VIII, No. 35 by Vivaldi, Sarabande et Cortege by Henri Dutilleux, Suite for Bassoon and String Quartet by Gordon Jacob and the Quintet in Eb Major for Piano and Winds by W.A. Mozart.