PDQ Bach in Houston We Have a Problem!
March 2007 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

It has been 41 years since Professor Peter Schickele "discovered" the music of P.D.Q. Bach and presented some of it to the world on a now-historic Vanguard LP. The music, of course, is all written by Schickele, often with familiar tunes borrowed and transformed to suit the satirical purpose at hand. Schickele and P.D.Q. have moved from Vanguard to the Telarc label, as more compositions were "discovered" in attics and other unlikely places.

Schickele aims for the broadest humor possible with his satire. His tampering is clever rather than subtle. But in so being, it can be appreciated by a broader audience. Take some of the instruments and voice parts that are used. Among them are singers like "bargain counter tenor," "mezzanine soprano," and "basso blotto." These names would be funny to anyone, no matter how much they know about music, but to a classical music lover, they’re amusing on a different level.

Live, Schickele extends the humor to the visual with an act that’s almost vaudevillian. He enters from the rear climbing down a rope. He plays the wine bottle in the cantata "Iphigenia in Brooklyn" and keeps swigging to achieve different pitches when he blows across the bottle’s mouth. This leads to a predictable pratfall. The musicians get into the act, too. In "Fuga Meshuga" each player of the flute-oboe-violin-bassoon quartet stands as he or she plays the theme, which makes for a merry bobbing of heads. But most of the time the musicians play it straight, which makes the jokes all the funnier.

Schickele has drawn a lot of his Houston program from the early days of P.D.Q. "Iphigenia in Brooklyn" was on the very first disc, and the "Schleptet in E Flat," "New Horizons in Music Appreciation (Beethoven Sportscast)," and "The Seasonings" were all introduced on the earlier LPs. Then there is the stolen-themes-to-end-all-stolen-themes piece, the ever-popular "Unbegun Symphony." In this work, Schickele quotes musical themes from Mozart to Stephen Foster to folk song. It’s really very clever in construction. At one point there are different themes from Tchaikovsky’s "Pathetique Symphony" that are made to work with each other, and they do. Who but Schickele would have noticed that?

The video was taken from HD widescreen camera work and is rich in color and detail. The sound was best for me in the 5.1 version, which is one of the most successful ever at pinpointing audience members behind the viewer, to the sides and to the front as well, between the viewer and the performers.

The extras are quite jolly and satisfactory. There is a version of "The Unbegun Symphony" which divulges the names of the original compositions using subtitles on the screen. There’s a clever group of rounds, "Odden and Enden," that was cut from the video presentation of the concert, an interview with Schickele from KUHT, and biographies of Schickele, conductor Peter Jacoby, and of course, P.D.Q. Bach. This DVD is a lot of fun. If you are new to P.D.Q. Bach and Schickele’s musical satire, you will probably get a kick out of it. If you’re an old fan you can wallow in the nostalgia while rolling in the aisles of your home theater.

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