What concerts are you looking forward to? (Part II)

[ritter]

Nice program. Glad to read you enjoyed it, Andrei!

[Florestan]

Nice program. Glad to read you enjoyed it, Andrei!

Thanks, I really did, and you would probably have enjoyed it as well, especially the VC: the violinist's relaxed, joyful and genial demeanor suited it perfectly. And btw, that "theme-and-variations" section which pops up out of the blue in the middle of the final rondo is magical --- it reminded me of the magical "ballet" section that pops up out of the blue in the middle of the final rondo of PC 9, or the magical "Turkish march" that pops up out of the blue in the middle of the final ronod of VC5. Mozart at his best in all cases.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Going to see Victorian Opera do The Cunning Little Vixen on Saturday with some friends.

Next month, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is doing a 'Mozart festival' with most concerts conducted by Richard Egarr. I am singing in the Requiem in the penultimate concert, and then the orchestra and chorus will be performing live music to the film Amadeus on the final weekend.

[GioCar]

Going to see Victorian Opera do The Cunning Little Vixen on Saturday with some friends.

Next month, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is doing a 'Mozart festival' with most concerts conducted by Richard Egarr. I am singing in the Requiem in the penultimate concert, and then the orchestra and chorus will be performing live music to the film Amadeus on the final weekend.

Cool! 
I sang in the Requiem (bass) when I was part of an amateur choir, quite a few years ago. Don't ask me about the final outcome, yours will be better, surely 


Next Monday: closing concert of the season at La Scala.

Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
Soprano: Camilla Tilling
Mezzosoprano: Gerhild Romberger
Tenore: Peter Sonn
Basso: Hanno Müller-Brachmann
Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala
Bernard Haitink

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Cool! 
I sang in the Requiem (bass) when I was part of an amateur choir, quite a few years ago. Don't ask me about the final outcome, yours will be better, surely 


Next Monday: closing concert of the season at La Scala.

Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
Soprano: Camilla Tilling
Mezzosoprano: Gerhild Romberger
Tenore: Peter Sonn
Basso: Hanno Müller-Brachmann
Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala
Bernard Haitink

Choirs are good fun! I am singing tenor, but I am an amateur as are many of the other choristers (very experienced amateurs, that is), and I am dreading the consistently high and loud tenor parts in the Dies Irae my upper register is not as reliable as people who have trained voices!

That Missa Solemnis concert looks good; I am sure you will have a great time.

[kishnevi]

Choirs are good fun! I am singing tenor, but I am an amateur as are many of the other choristers (very experienced amateurs, that is), and I am dreading the consistently high and loud tenor parts in the Dies Irae my upper register is not as reliable as people who have trained voices!

That Missa Solemnis concert looks good; I am sure you will have a great time.

Just be glad you're not singing the Beethoven.  If you have a score of the Missa Solemnis available, look at the choral passages in the Credo, especially the et resurrexit...et ascendit. The Mozart will seem a breeze after that.

[Karl Henning]

Just be glad you're not singing the Beethoven.  If you have a score of the Missa Solemnis available, look at the choral passages in the Credo, especially the et resurrexit...et ascendit. The Mozart will seem a breeze after that.

A friend of mine who sings with the Cantata Singers is declining the honor to sing the Missa solemnis this season.  He has already endured that experience had the pleasure, and feels no need to put himself through that again finds that he other engagements those evenings.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Just be glad you're not singing the Beethoven.  If you have a score of the Missa Solemnis available, look at the choral passages in the Credo, especially the et resurrexit...et ascendit. The Mozart will seem a breeze after that.

Haha! Our choir performed it last year I believe, but I wasn't in it then! I wil have a look at the score....it does strike me as a very difficult work anyway.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

A friend of mine who sings with the Cantata Singers is declining the honor to sing the Missa solemnis this season.  He has already endured that experience had the pleasure, and feels no need to put himself through that again finds that he other engagements those evenings.

[NikF]

Telemann Ensemble 40th Anniversary Concert.

"The 40th Anniversary concert in St Mary's will include music by Telemann, Vivaldi, Bach and Handel." - and that's all I know.

It's not the sort of concert I'd usually attend, but that's why I'm thinking of going, because I've always tried to see (hear) beyond my frame of reference. Also, it doesn't hurt that I was given tickets for it! At the very least it'll stop me hanging around street corners on a Saturday night.

[king ubu]

Not too active here in the past few weeks (busy times), so there have been several concerts since my latest post here ...

Anyway, tonight is the last concert I have a ticket for (I may spontaneously attend one or two or three more in the next days, before season closes):

Tonhalle, Zürich - 23.06.17

Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Jakub Hruša Leitung
Isabelle Faust Violine

Béla Bartók
Konzertsuite aus "Der wunderbare Mandarin" op. 19

Robert Schumann
Violinkonzert d-Moll WoO 1

Leoš Janáček
Sinfonietta für grosses Orchester

Faust is the main reason I'll be going, and I surely hope she'll do better with the Schumann than with the Mendelssohn recently. There, she was accompanied by the Freiburger Barockorchester, and they were not to blame ... but playing the Reformation instead of the Italian or the Scottish was still a decision of doubtful value ... ordered the Nezet-Séguin Mendelssohn though, I'll keep listening for sure, even though I only "get" those two symphonies ... funny enough I've not just heard the Reformation but also the cantata in concert this season ... but none of the "good" ones. The Bartók and Mendelssohn will be premieres for me ... which applies to the conductor as well. But I guess if Faust plays with him, he oughta be alright.

[king ubu]

^ the Faust/Hrusa concert was pretty great indeed! Though the one work they did together didn't gel really. The Bartók and Janácek had the Tonhalle dudes and dudettes on their toes (and seventy guest trumpet players in uniform ... I guess they came from the local police music or something ... it was just 12 trumpets, 2 bass trumpets and 2 euphoniums, or rather the smaller ones in e-flat, no idea what they're called in english, those that everyone in harmony bands makes fun of, in German "Es-Horn", in Switzerland always used in diminutive ... anyway, they sounded like seventy fersure!) The orchestra was outstanding and Hrusa had control, even though it got blaringly loud (in some rare moments probably too loud for the 19c shoebox hall), you could always hear everything, the soundscape remained clear and penetrable.

For the Schumann, Faust came on (she did the obigatory Bach solo encore, too - just as Barati did, recently, after playing Shosty 1, she chose a slow movement, don't know which one). She was in full control of the violin part, in fact it semppt as if she's inhabiting it! However, the orchestra sounded mushy, often pretty uninteresting really, and Hrusa didn't seem to have much of a plan what to do about that. So, after a so-so Mendelssohn (where the fault was Faust's, not the Freiburg Barocker's, mind me!), I got an okay/good (but not great) Schumann ... but it was still interesting to be there and hear it. I remain unconvinced about the concerto for now and have decided to revisit the four recent recordings I have of it (Faust, Zehetmair, Widmann, Kopatchinskaja) soon, trying to figure it out ...

--

Then, Monday, I caught a *great* one, all new Hungarian music:

MON 26.06.17
PETER EÖTVÖS CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FOUNDATION@TONHALLE
07:30 pm , Kleiner Saal
Kammermusik Extra

THReNSeMBle
Péter Eötvös Leitung Creative Chair
Balázs Horváth Leitung
Anton Mecht Spronk Violoncello
Roland Szentpáli Tuba
Miklós Lukács Cimbalom

Péter Tornyai
"QuatreQuatuors" für Ensemble (2010), Schweizer Erstaufführung
György Kurtág
"Brefs messages" op. 47 für Kammerensemble (2011)
Máté Bella
"Chuang Tzu's Dream" für Violoncello und Ensemble (2008), Schweizer Erstaufführung

Máté Balogh
"Jam Quartet" für Kammerensemble (2016), Schweizer Erstaufführung
Balázs Horváth
"pikokosmos = millikosmos" für Tuba und Ensemble (2015), Uraufführung
Péter Eötvös
"da capo" für Cimbalom und Ensemble (2014), Schweizer Erstaufführung

First time I went to the introduction before the concert. This turned out to be a lengthy discussion led by a lady from the Paul Sacher Institute in Basel with Eötvös, and it was pretty interesting indeed.

As for the music, I absolutely loved the Bella cello concerto (terrific job by the soloist, Anton Mecht Spronk), the Kurtág and the Horváth tuba pieces.

The Balogh piece didn't catch me right away, it's set for cello as main voice, pluse flute, piano, percussion (just three triangles) and a fifth guy operating a musical box at one point. It grew on me as it went on, and the cello player did a great job.

The Tornyai was fine, but the four groups should really not be mixed up on stage but spread in a room ... and having no harp but a synthesizer didn't help much (Tonhalle would have been able to organize a harp I'm sure, but the THReNSeMBle probably had no one at hand to play it).

The Eötvös to close proceedings was the longest work (they were mostly in the 10-15 minutes range, the final one around 20, I think), and it was a blast. However, it also seemed a bit too pastiche for me here and there, as if there was too much well-calculated fun in it, and some parts sounded like a film soundtrack and failed to hold up my interest.

Cimbalom was present in several of the other pieces too (there's a traditional Swiss variant of it, but I've never seen it used outside of traditional music, I know of one jazz musician that played it in the 80s though and maybe still does play).

[Spineur]

Thank you King Ubu for your very interesting live music recensions.  Short of attending the concerts myself they convey perfectly your experiences

[pjme]

I went to Brussels last Thursday/ BOZAR for

Maurice Ravel Rapsodie Espagnole pour orchestre seul (1907-1908)
Ravel Tzigane (1924)
Ravel Daphnis et Chloé, symphonie chorégraphique (1909-1912)

ConductorALAIN ALTINOGLU

Chorus masterMARTINO FAGGIANI

Violin SATÉNIK KHOURDOIAN

La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
La Monnaie Chorus Academy led by Benoît Giaux

Excellent and exiting evening. Altinoglu did a very good job. Daphnis et Chloé was very impressive - very large orchestra and chorus! I understand why this complete version is done so rarely.
One could say that - once in a while - one could detect that this massive score is not "usual fare", nor for the conductor , nor for the musicians.  Rythmically difficult, quicksilver, complex music. Plenty of magical moments and the melodies are still in my head after 3 days. The woodwinds were exquisite.

SATÉNIK KHOURDOIAN gave a burning hot performance of Tzigane!



Wonderful concert! Look forward to season 2017-2018. The BOZAR organ ( built in 1930) has been restored.

In september :

Francis Poulenc Litanies à la Vierge Noire (Notre-Dame de Rocamadour), FP 82 (1936/1947)
Claude Bebussy Trois Nocturnes (1897–1899)
Samuel Barber Toccata Festiva, op. 36 (1960)
Benoît Mernier Dickinson Songs (World Premiere, commission of La Monnaie)

Peter

[king ubu]

Thank you King Ubu for your very interesting live music recensions.  Short of attending the concerts myself they convey perfectly your experiences

Thanks a lot for this feedback! I tend to write somewhat longer in German, but if I get a reaction such as this, that may indeed push me to report more regularly in English as well :-)

However, this season is closing now - I have one more ticket for the final concert at Tonhalle ... had to get one, as I'm starting to miss the weekly concerts already even before season ends! This will feature Antonini conducting two of Haydn's last symphonies (101 and 103), and Mozart's KV 218, featuring the concertmaster of the orchestra, Julia Becker. This will be the very final concert before the hall is shutting down for refurbishing bigtime ... the orchestra will move into a temporary hall for three seasons. Hopefully, this will turn out well and not do too much damage to its sound ... and it's cool that Paavo Järvi is not waiting to take on his position as chief conductor until they can move back in, but he will actually start while they're still in exile at the other end of town.

[king ubu]

Season closing concert tonight:

Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Giovanni Antonini Leitung
Julia Becker Violine

Joseph Haydn
Sinfonie D-Dur Hob. I:101 "Die Uhr"

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Violinkonzert Nr. 3 G-Dur KV 216

Joseph Haydn
Sinfonie Es-Dur Hob. I:103 "Mit dem Paukenwirbel"

[Drasko]

Tonight, closing concert of the local organ festival. Played by the group of mostly local musicians consisting of two trumpets, tuba, two violins and the Zanin organ of Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic cathedral here in Belgrade. Program:

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber
Sonata tam aris quam aulis servientes, no .7

Vincent Persichetti
The Hollow Men, for trumpet & string orchestra (arr. for trumpet & organ), Op. 25

Alan Hovhaness
Prayer of St. Gregory, for trumpet & string orchestra (arr. for trumpet & organ)

Oliver Messiaen
Dieu est Saint (Meditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité, 2)

Teodor Hloušek
Baroque Concerto for Tuba & Organ

Petronio Franceschini
Sonata in D for two trumpets, strings and continuo

I also got the subscription tickets for the next season of the Belgrade Philharmonic. Will type that out later.

[NikF]

Schumann: Overture, Scherzo and Finale.
Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto No. 1
Schumann: Symphony No. 1

Conductor: Sir Roger Norrington
Piano: Roman Rabinovich
RSNO

[Karl Henning]

Cool.  I think the piano concerti are more consistent than the symphonies, for Mendelssohn.

[NikF]

Cool.  I think the piano concerti are more consistent than the symphonies, for Mendelssohn.

It'll be my first time hearing a live performance of a Mendelssohn piano concerto. I'm looking forward to it.