Music Reviews : Schickele Up to His Old Tricks as P.D.Q. Bach

Trust Peter Schickele, musical funster and alter ego of the mythical P.D.Q. Bach, to prove that the long-lost art of improvisation is, well, lost.

When his big moment came to play a created-on-the-spot cadenza in P.D.Q.’s “Fantasieshtick” for Piano and Orchestra Wednesday at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, Schickele paused, hesitated, mused, agonized, ventured some possibilities in the air and finally threw in the towel. He brought over a violinist from the accompanying Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra to join him at the ivories and the two played a few bars of “Heart and Soul.” Problem solved.

Of course, everyone in the audience had been prepped for the moment. Schickele has been at this game for a quarter of a century and never leaves his audience at a loss to appreciate his spoofs.

He told the crowd exactly what he planned--and failed--to do in introductory remarks that have become complete comic monologues in themselves. These included anecdotes about small-town life and the hazards of tenure in the fictitious Department of Musical Pathology at the non-existent University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople and a running gag answering phone calls from patrons to “Dial a Joke,” in addition to musicological explanations about the oeuvre of Bach’s last and least son.

P.D.Q.’s “Howdy” Symphony, for instance, is a mirror-image of Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony, with the musicians straggling in at the beginning instead of stealing out at the end. (The first movement dissolves into a tuning session after an excursion into “Hernando’s Hideaway.”)

P.D.Q. can always be counted to echo the music of others, and he does tend to get stuck in repetitions and segue with tastelessly blithe ease from one incompatible century and vocabulary to another. Still, encountering him proved, as usual, an irresistible love-in.