TT 283: André Watts plays Edward MacDowell; Christopher Nolan's TENET
also: Kudos to Ludwig Göransson, Vince Keenan, and Billy Hart
Sorry to hear of the passing of André Watts.
Among other many fine achievements, Watts was an important advocate for Edward MacDowell. At one point MacDowell’s second piano concerto was a repertory staple, one of the few large-scale 19th-century works by an American composer to claim such status. (The concerto was completed in 1885.)
MacDowell is at his best when writing fast and brilliant scherzi, for example the middle movement of Concerto no. 2. Watts’s record with Andrew Litton and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra is excellent. Re-listening tonight, I’m struck by how “American” this piece is: there are “jazzy” harmonies (the piece begins with a vamping B-flat sixth chord in bars 3 and 4, for heaven’s sake) and even a touch of syncopation.
On video, Watts encores with a “Moto Perpetuo” from the Op. 46 etudes. A real “novelty rag!” (I’m joking, but there is definitely a line to be drawn from “Moto Perpetuo” to Zez Confrey.)
It was a big deal politically and socially when Watts was pulled into the international spotlight at a tender age in 1963. In Raise Up Off of Me, jazz hero Hampton Hawes gives Watts an earthy namecheck when decrying racial stereotypes:
André Watts, black as his namesake, plays Mozart like he's tuned into the grave.
A notably good example of Watts in solo repertoire is Live in Tokyo from 1980, with stellar renditions of Scarlatti, Haydn, Brahms, Ravel, and Debussy.
Almost everyone likes a good action movie once in a while. Considering how many action movies are made, it is almost shocking how few of them are any good.
The approaching Oppenheimer sent me to back to Tenet.
I have had a minor transformation in my own opinion of Christopher Nolan’s work. Initially I didn’t like Inception much, but upon rewatch I felt something different. (I tweeted, “Watched Nolan’s INCEPTION on the plane home. Maybe my taste is getting worse, but I liked it a lot more this time. Amoral rich-person’s fantasy, perfectly cast. Doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it does what it wants, and what it wants is to be is Nolan’s INCEPTION.”
Like Wes Anderson, Nolan is all about style. In Nolan’s case, that’s usually pretty much all it is: Stylized blockbuster action.
At first I placed Tenet in the “almost good” basket. But after a rewatch, I’ve moved the flick over to the basket marked “uniquely Nolan, and therefore uniquely good.”
It takes an enormous amount of money and resources to make this kind of thing. The whole process is indefensible politically, of course. A Wikipedia list of the most expensive movies ever made is disheartening, for most of those movies are pretty bad.
Two of the franchises on the “most expensive” list are Mission: Impossible and The Fast and the Furious. I really kind of hate both these franchises, for they blatantly discard physics. (In M:I the huge set pieces require dozens of unlikely actions in a row, and in F&F they just drive cars out of flying planes onto the highway.)
The best action movies stay more tethered to reality…unless there is a workaround like science fiction, magic or the supernatural.
With Inception and Tenet, Nolan has invented two one-off workarounds for spectacular action. He creates a world and abides by the rules of that world. It’s a little cheap, but it works; indeed, I believe the rules of the time inversion in Tenet are “accurate” (within reason). Due respect.
In her New York Times review of Tenet, Jessica Kiang wrote the perfect sentence:
Nolan is, by several exploding football fields, the foremost auteur of the “intellectacle,” which combines popcorn-dropping visual ingenuity with all the sedate satisfactions of a medium-grade Sudoku.
Ludwig Göransson does a hell of a job with the score of Tenet. I transcribed four bars of the major cue “747.”
(The transcription is of thirty seconds into the cue. I think the short notes marked “pizz.” are half deck pizzicato and half deck arco.)
Vince Keenan is now on Substack. Welcome Vince! I love this pitch-perfect review of the new Library of America set of Crime Novels.
Billy Hart, 82 years young, is currently into his first week of three at the Village Vanguard.
1. Aaron Parks 2. Billy Hart 3. Julian Lage
The drummer is in residence! I’ll be joining Billy with Mark Turner and Ben Street for his own quartet.
