Concert Reviews

[Phrygian]

This morning at the Musikverein, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Mariss Jansons.  11am and the house was packed.  Up on the Balkon Loge I spied the erstwhile MD of the Vienna Philharmonic (and First Violin), Dr. Clemens Hellsberg, with the Director of the Musikverein and his group (they always sit in that same spot).  The men all sit together and the women all sit together!!  What always amazes me about these people is that, despite the fact they must attend hundreds of concerts, they are always enthusiastic and engaged.

Today's program started with Frank Peter Zimmerman playing the Brahms Violin Concerto.  He gave a noble and elegant account of this work and I was thinking of Dr. Brahms during the playing of it, as he used to be a Dirigent at the Musikverein. 

But it was in the encore where Zimmerman amazed, with a glowing and fiercely difficult piece (I presume) by Bach, though I couldn't identify the actual piece.  It certainly sounded like Bach and had the challenges one might expect from that composer.  Anyway, Zimmerman was up to the challenge and the audience was rowdy and enthusiastic in its response. 

The second half with the orchestra was Stravinksy's "Petroushka" and the players were in great form, particularly at the hands of Jansons who delivered his instructions on the finest points to which the orchestra responded magnificently.  What an orchestrator Stravinsky was and what a total delight and crowd-pleaser this ballet music is.  There's quite a lot of humour in it too, and I could see Jansons smiling his way through it.

Today the audience demanded, and got, two encores from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra:  the first took me by surprise, a dance from the end of the "Nutcracker" but the real show-stopper was a piece by Ligeti and everybody wanted to know what it was, but were never told.  I've found it, and here it is!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbIqOfBz3yc

Maestro Jansons is in fine form and is still a very handsome man!!  The audience just adored him.