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

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

You can hear the transcription - done by Rodrigo himself - on a Naxos recording with Gwyneth Wentink. I actually prefer it to the guitar version! But for the composer, it's not just about pleasing harpists, it also helps address the balance issues where you have to calibrate your orchestration so carefully to make sure a guitar can be heard at all times. Orchestras can get a little rowdier when the soloist is playing a harp 

Ooh that is quite interesting, thanks.


............but I will always be more biased towards guitar versions even if it is a concerto I would never wish to play myself anyway.

[AnthonyAthletic]

Going to same concert at Leeds Town Hall a few days before. Looking forward☺

Super!, please drop a line on this thread after your concert and ditto 

[Mandryka]

Marc Mauillon Machaut Salle Cortot Paris next Tuesday.

[André]

Just bought a ticket to this concert next Sunday:

Marc-André Hamelin and the Pacifica Quartet

- Hamelin: piano quintet
- Schumann: piano quintet op 44
- Beethoven: string quartet op 74

[Judith]

Just been  yesterday evening

Sinfonia of Leeds

They performed

Mozart  Overture The Magic Flute
Shostakovich  Symphony no 9
Brahms Piano Concerto no 2

Soloist  Danny Driver
Conductor Anthony Kraus

Very impressed by Drivers performance of Brahms.  He gave it his "all"

[Karl Henning]

Just been  yesterday evening

Sinfonia of Leeds

They performed

Mozart  Overture The Magic Flute
Shostakovich  Symphony no 9
Brahms Piano Concerto no 2

Soloist  Danny Driver
Conductor Anthony Kraus

Very impressed by Drivers performance of Brahms.  He gave it his "all"

Cool. And that was the right order—the Brahms being higher-calorie than the Shostakovich

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[Mirror Image]

Just been  yesterday evening

Sinfonia of Leeds

They performed

Mozart  Overture The Magic Flute
Shostakovich  Symphony no 9
Brahms Piano Concerto no 2

Soloist  Danny Driver
Conductor Anthony Kraus

Very impressed by Drivers performance of Brahms.  He gave it his "all"

How was the performance of the Shostakovich 9th?

[TheGSMoeller]

I continue to be impressed with the Nashville Symphony, and their 2018-19 schedule is big time. Here are a few I'm considering for my subscription.

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor | Midori, violin
Beethoven – Violin Concerto
John Adams – Harmonielehre  Live Recording


Hans Graf, conductor | Nashville Symphony Chorus
R.Strauss – Serenade in E-flat Major
Stravinsky – Symphony of Psalms
Ravel – Daphnis et Chloé


Robert Spano, conductor | Simon Trpčeski, piano
Michael Gandolfi – Selections from The Garden of Cosmic Speculation
Sibelius – Symphony No. 5
Rachmaninoff – Piano Concerto No. 3


Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor | Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano | Cynthia Millar, ondes Martenot
Messiaen – Turangalîla-symphonie

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I continue to be impressed with the Nashville Symphony, and their 2018-19 schedule is big time. Here are a few I'm considering for my subscription.
[snipped]

Looks excellent. So you're not in Atlanta anymore?

[Judith]

How was the performance of the Shostakovich 9th?

That was very good to say it was a local orchestra. Made me realise, very much like Prokofiev.

[listener]

Tomorrow, LALO Symphonie Espagnole,  SCHUMANN Symphony no.4  Vancouver Symphony
Guest conductor Perry So using violins separated right and left, photo of yesterday's concert from VSO's page.
Alexandra Soumm, violin

[TheGSMoeller]

Looks excellent. So you're not in Atlanta anymore?

My family and I moved to the Nashville area last June. We love it here.

[André]

The Pacifica Quartet concert was excellent. Maybe yesterday's snowstorm is to blame, but it was poorly attended (maybe 350-400 max).

I'm glad they chose op. 74 among the Beethoven quartets. It's one of my favourites. Marc-André Hamelin's newest composition (2016), a piano quintet, was interesting to hear. The writing for strings appears quite basic, but it meshed well with the fascinating piano part. Hamelin's idiom is post-Rachmaninov/ornsteinian. There are some harsh chromaticisms but they are organic to the work's progression. An interesting discovery. The Schumann was all I hoped it would be: generous, passionate, tightly coiled.

The Pacificas are an excellent group. If I'm to judge by this concert and choice of works, the first violin or the cellist are not the leaders of the group. That role seems to belong to the violist, whose personality dominated the music-making.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Just saw Tristan und Isolde (Melbourne Opera) last night, conducted by Anthony Negus with a mostly excellent Australian cast.

I have to say, as one of the smaller opera companies in Melbourne (the other larger ones being Victorian Opera and Opera Australia) they are doing remarkably well. In comparison to their production of Lohengrin I saw last year, T&I was just on another level in terms of musicianship. Negus brought a fast paced reading to the score and was sensitive to the needs of the singers in the rather strange acoustic of the 2,896 seat Palais Theatre (formerly used by the old Victorian State Opera before their merger with Opera Australia in the 1990s). The theatre itself probably needs some work on its interior, particularly adjustment of acoustics. I am glad that Victorian Opera and Melbourne Opera have begun to use this venue as their home theatre rather than trying to cram into the smaller theatres in the city, which have unsuitably sized orchestra pits for 19th century repertoire.

The production design was overall great but I felt sometimes bordered on the ugly in Act 2 with a kaleidoscopic video projection backdrop hinting at the use (abuse?) of the Love Potion as a hallucinogenic substance. A great idea really, but my personal taste is something more minimalist in this opera where the audience's attention is drawn directly towards the singers. Acts 1 and (especailly) act 3 were marvellous. The use of light and the sun as a visual symbol was extremely good and I really felt Tristan (with a generous splattering of stage blood oozing from his abdomen) was almost being scorched by the sun's harsh light during his anxious wait for Isolde in act 3. Also, the harsh rays of the sun almost smothering the characters at the end of act 2 were a great addition. Act 1 was pretty straightforward and unambiguous in the staging. I enjoyed that the production avoided setting it in any particular time or place, as time and place as a sense of 'home' are ultimately unimportant to Tristan and Isolde; the home they seek is in each other.

Being able to seat nearly 3,000 people was useful as the former opening night was cancelled due to no replacements available for the role of Isolde as the usual soprano had a virus. She sounded splendid on the night though, albeit with an overall austerity and lack of character in contrast to the other singers. Some of the people who had booked for opening night fortunately did fit in the theatre, but they did bring out an extra row of chairs at the very back.

Images from the web of the auditoriums of the current two main opera houses in Melbourne, Australia.

Palais Theatre (2,896 seats) but it was difficult to find an adequate image of it set out as an opera theatre with the orchestra pit visible. So here is the closest thing I could find where the upper balcony is unfortunately hidden on the other side of the camera:



State Theatre (2,079 seats) where Opera Australia is based in the more modern Arts Centre complex. The orchestra pit here is indeed a bit bigger and more suitable to the Ring production we have every few years. Going to see Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg here later on.



Wagner productions tend to be the ones where I bump into almost everyone I know and often people I haven't seen in years as well as quite a few well known musicians in my area. I could barely walk five metres during the intermissions without ending up saying hello to someone. (It is always nice, but sometimes it can get a bit much!)

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I continue to be impressed with the Nashville Symphony, and their 2018-19 schedule is big time. Here are a few I'm considering for my subscription.

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor | Midori, violin
Beethoven – Violin Concerto
John Adams – Harmonielehre  Live Recording


Hans Graf, conductor | Nashville Symphony Chorus
R.Strauss – Serenade in E-flat Major
Stravinsky – Symphony of Psalms
Ravel – Daphnis et Chloé


Robert Spano, conductor | Simon Trpčeski, piano
Michael Gandolfi – Selections from The Garden of Cosmic Speculation
Sibelius – Symphony No. 5
Rachmaninoff – Piano Concerto No. 3


Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor | Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano | Cynthia Millar, ondes Martenot
Messiaen – Turangalîla-symphonie

Those look like wonderful programmes! I hope you manage to see all of them. The last two look particularly attractive to me.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Grrrr just bought tickets to Meistersinger and it is bloody expensive

[Ken B]

The Hamilton Philharmonic is doing a Classical Era concert

Haydn: Overture to L'anima del filosofo: Orfeo ed Euridice
Clementi: Symphony in B-flat major
Mozart: Chaconne and Pas seul from Idomeneo
Pleyel: Bassoon Concerto
Haydn: Symphony No. 88

[king ubu]

Coming up this week:

Camerata Bern
Meesun Hong Coleman Konzertmeisterin
Kit Armstrong Klavier

Johann Sebastian Bach Ouvertüre Nr. 1 C-Dur BWV 1066
Johann Sebastian Bach Klavierkonzert Nr. 6 F-Dur BWV 1057
--
Joseph Martin Kraus Sinfonie C-Dur VB 138
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Klavierkonzert Nr. 22 Es-Dur KV 482

Couple of sentences ... this one was better than I was hoping for actually ... or maybe less good. Sound balance with the harpsichord that Armstrong played in the Bach concerto was difficult: small ensemble, strings HAD to play SOME to at least kind of fill the hall with sound. I was front row so I did hear the harpsichord. Got two free tickets for this after complaining about an obnoxious photographer present during the recent Buniatishvili Schumann concert, and my mom and girlfriend sat somewhere at the back of the hall, seats of the most expensive category ... they didn't really hear that harpsichord. Armstrong however seems to be a really thoughtful young man, not into flashy stuff and hype and all that crap, but really into the music. The harpsichord was part of the band for the Bach overture (very nice!) and for the Kraus (very Mozartean in spots, but easily the highlight of the concert, Meesun Hong played wonderfully there).

For the Kraus and Mozart I moved to one of those expensive seats as my gf was tired and left for home already ... sound is somewhat better, but you get so much more distraction from people compared to front row, it took me a whilte to get used to that (even though it was the Kraus they played and I really enjoyed it ... gotta explore those Naxos discs now! And the most recent Antonini/Haydn, too).

For the Mozart then, they placed the concert grand in the center ... sound balance was no more an issue (it really was in the Bach concerto only), the touch and sound of Armstrong's playing was wonderful indeed - there were many spots where I thought: yes, this is it, this is just how Mozart ought to played - but he and the ensemble failed to shape a coherent whole out of the long (35 min?) concerto. With Armstrong really into the playing and not into having the overview of all things going on, I felt they would have needed a conductor here, Meesun Hong was obviously not able to really shape this, either. Anyway, huge applause and then a wonderful encore (a Bach choral prelude).

Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Andrés Orozco-Estrada Leitung
Hilary Hahn Violine

Leos Janácek "Taras Bulba"
Sergej Prokofjew Violinkonzert Nr. 1 D-Dur op. 19
--
Antonín Dvorák Sinfonie Nr. 7 d-Moll op. 70

And then, Hilary Hahn - and wow, that was wonderful! The wealth of sounds she got from her violin ... this goes way beyond the perfection usually associated with her playing, she even had the sound go ugly several times, that concerto quite bowled me over. Hahn and Oroczo-Estrada did shape that thing, and she did communicate with the orchestra (sometimes with looks, sometimes just with music) ...

The Janácek will probably not become a favourite in this house, but the start the orchestra took - wow! Out of the nothing, the audience hadn't quite settled yet, Orozco-Estrada just seemed to turn a switch and there they were, BANG in your face! Belying all the rumours and bad-mouthing (what's that obnoxious dude with his silly blog where the Swiss in general are put down in the most simplistic/fake manner?) of the quality of the orchestra, as of now, they are in absolutely splendid shape! They proved that with Haitink, with Currentzis, with Gardiner lately, just to mention a few ... the insecurity of the Bringuier era and the open succession seems blown away (also I read that Järvi was in the audience to check out one of the Verdi Requiem performances with Gardiner). Either way, they did mighty good in the Janácek and they excelled in the Dvorák. Wonderful playing of two pieces that are not my favourites, but quite alright, that for sure.

---

Tonight:

Zürcher Kammerorchester
Sir Roger Norrington (Ehrendirigent) Leitung
Isabelle Faust Violine

Robert Schumann Ouvertüre, Scherzo und Finale E-Dur op. 52
Robert Schumann Violinkonzert d-Moll op. posth.
Franz Schubert Sinfonie Nr. 6 C-Dur D 589

--

Tomorrow night:

Baritone Christian Gerhaher
Piano Gerold Huber

In a concert on the Studiobühne, the world-famous baritone Christian Gerhaher introduces himself to the audience. Gerhaher plays the lead role in Holliger's new opera Lunea, which deals with the fascinating romantic poet Nikolaus Lenau. Accompanied by his well-known piano partner Gerold Huber, he sings Robert Schumann's Lieder op. 90 on poems by Nikolaus Lenau, and then talks about his artistic work in an interview with Claus Spahn.

https://opernhaus.ch/en/spielplan/calendar/gespraechskonzert-christian-gerhaher/season_11232/

--

Thursday night:

David Murray Infinity Quartet feat. Saul Williams
Saul Williams poetry/rap, David Murray sax, Orrin Evans p, Jahibu Shahid b, Nasheet Waits dr


Yowzah! 

[Brian]

February in Dallas features big number twos (heh):

10 Feb
Haydn | Cello Concerto No 1
Rachmaninov | Symphony No 2

Harriet Krijgh, cello
Dallas SO | Jaap van Zweden

24 Feb
Mahler | Symphony No 2

Dallas SO | Jaap van Zweden

Jaap leaves in May and no replacement has been announced yet 

Update: Harriet Krijgh is ill so the Haydn this Saturday has been changed to his Sinfonia concertante for violin, cello, oboe, and bassoon, which I've certainly never seen live before, featuring members of the DSO.

Not too late to come visit, Gurn!!

[king ubu]

Zürcher Kammerorchester
Sir Roger Norrington (Ehrendirigent) Leitung
Isabelle Faust Violine

Robert Schumann Ouvertüre, Scherzo und Finale E-Dur op. 52
Robert Schumann Violinkonzert d-Moll op. posth.
Franz Schubert Sinfonie Nr. 6 C-Dur D 589

That was wonderful last night! Schumann's Op. 52 proved a really nice opener for the main act. The orchestra loves playing with Norrington (he was their principal conductor from 2011 to 2016) and he loves working with them, quite obviously. His conducting at times was just a few gestures to shape the performance, they're a chamber orchestra and know how to play together without any conductor after all ... I understand they're fully using modern instruments, but in direct comparison, they seem a much livelier bunch than the Basler Kammerorchester to me (and I'm considering catching they're C.P.E. Bach/Amadée programme w/Bezuidenhout, albeit it's the night before I'm leaving for a short jazz festival in March ... Bezuidenhout will play Wq 20/H. 423 and KV 271 "Jeunehomme", the orchestra will also play J.C. Bach's symphony Op. 3 No. 6 and C.P.E. Bach's symphony Wq 183 no. 3/H. 665 - no conductor then).

Faust was terrific in the Schumann, and again she has played with ZKO many times and they (and Norrington) were fully in sync, which was a real pleasure to witness. Her performance of the concerto at Tonhalle last June was already excellent, but suffered from rather clueless orchestral playing - conductor Jakob Hrusa did a great Bartók Mandarin suite and Janácek Sinfonietta before and after, but he seemed to not have much of an idea what to do with the Schumann. This time, it all fell together perfectly well, and in fact the smaller sources worked very well for me, too.

The final Schubert was delightful - and I guess a good pick. Anything more substantial would have been an overkill after the exhilarating violin concerto (maybe this would have been a case where programming the concerto at the end would have made sense though? Zinman did that at Tonhalle a few years ago when he played a late Mozart symphony and the Brahms concerto with FP Zimmermann, and that made perfect sense).

Either way, great concert!