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

Started by Siedler, April 20, 2007, 05:34:10 PM

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ChamberNut

Quote from: bhodges on March 28, 2008, 08:35:03 AM
Mozart: Serenade in B-flat Major, K. 361, "Gran Partita" 

Ah, Bruce!  Envy isn't the word.  Just love this work.

bhodges

Quote from: ChamberNut on March 28, 2008, 09:11:51 AM
Ah, Bruce!  Envy isn't the word.  Just love this work.

These MET Chamber Orchestra concerts are usually great.  The musicians play with such passion--as if they've been set free from the opera house pit and given the chance to do stuff they never play normally.  I imagine it will be quite something.  (Plus, I haven't heard Eine Kleine in decades, by anyone, so that will be fun, actually.)

--Bruce

Solitary Wanderer

APN News & Media Premier Series 2008 Concert 3

Thu 3 Apr 2008 8:00pm - Auckland Town Hall THE EDGE®

Rachmaninov & Brahms
     

Johannes Fritzsch Conductor
John Chen Piano
   
Glinka   Overture to Rusian and Ludmila                   
Rachmaninov  Piano Concerto No. 2 
Brahms   Symphony No. 2

Auckland favourite John Chen returns to perform one of the great piano showpieces: Rachmaninov's magnificent second concerto. After the interval, Brahms' moving and joyous second symphony under the expert baton of maestro Johannes Fritzsch.

Should be a good one.  :)
'I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.' ~ Emily Bronte

bhodges

Nice program!  That Glinka is one of my alltime favorites, too...

PS, I don't know why I didn't find it before, but the Auckland Town Hall looks like a cool place to hear a concert! 

--Bruce

Solitary Wanderer

Quote from: bhodges on March 28, 2008, 12:16:25 PM
Nice program!  That Glinka is one of my alltime favorites, too...

PS, I don't know why I didn't find it before, but the Auckland Town Hall looks like a cool place to hear a concert! 

--Bruce

Hi Bruce:

Yes, the Auckland Town Hall is a wonderful building. It has a great reputation for its superb acoustics.

Theres an underground carpark from which you emerge at the Town Halls front door and a great Japanese resturant next door which we usually frequent before a concert.

All in all it makes for a perfect evening of life and music  :)

By the way, I'm not familiar with the Glinka so that will be the musical surprise for the night.  ;)
'I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.' ~ Emily Bronte

bhodges

Quote from: Solitary Wanderer on March 28, 2008, 12:48:16 PM
Hi Bruce:

Yes, the Auckland Town Hall is a wonderful building. It has a great reputation for its superb acoustics.

Theres an underground carpark from which you emerge at the Town Halls front door and a great Japanese resturant next door which we usually frequent before a concert.

All in all it makes for a perfect evening of life and music  :)

By the way, I'm not familiar with the Glinka so that will be the musical surprise for the night.  ;)

All sounds totally great, including the Japanese food. 

The Glinka is one of my favorite overtures.  It is fast and very infectious.  (I've heard Gergiev and the Kirov do it as an encore--lots of fun!)

--Bruce

Lilas Pastia

Last Tuesday: WTC excerpts with Angela Hewitt, Gabrieli brass canzoni (MSO brass) and the Bruckner 5th symphony with the Montreal Symphony under Nagano.

My first ever 5th symphony in concert. Kent Nagano had come up with the bizarre idea of a first half comprised of solo piano and brass pieces. No orchestra. Angela Hewitt played 3 P&F from the Well-Tempered Piano Grand, while members of the orchestra's brass played two canzoni by Giovanni Gabrieli in alternance with the piano works. The idea, you see, was to offer a program based on counterpoint (incl. fugue). Not a bad plan, as it offered an interesting variety of repertoire, eras, styles, sonorities. If one was game enough, it made for a different kind of Evening at the Symphony.

Pianist Hewitt is well-known as a Bach specialist, but there's no way she can make us think of what she played as anything other than a travesty of how the music was conceived and how it must have sounded in the 1700s. This was heart on sleeve playing of the grandest kind, with myriad agogic and tempo adjustments always used to colour the music in the most ravishing shades of pastel. The Gabrieli works were something else altogether, grandly sonorous and also, of necessity, completely divorced from its more than 400 years' probable sonoristic complexion. I don't know what kind of trombones and sackbuts were used back then (around 1595), but it can't have been that kind of burnished, resonant sound.

The main offering was described in the local papers as "rather good". Plain as it may look, it's quite an appropriate assessment. One reviewer pointed to the fact that this reading was very removed from the intimate connection we've heard Franz-Paul Decker bring to his Bruckner in Montreal. Quite true.

Approximate timings were 21 - 18 -15 and 24. Technically it was generally well conceived, save for a much too slow scherzo and an indifferent, nondescript adagio.The orchestral detail Nagano brought out was sometimes mesmerizing in its beautiful complexity. It was fascinating to watch the interplay of string voices, the really surprising brass lines. Textures kept changing from 2 horns here to 4 the minute after, then 3, or 5, etc. Trumpets also switched from 2 to 4, to 1 or 3. I had no idea there was so many minute adjustments to the textures.

On a technical level this was excellent. The strings and winds in particular were unfailingly beautiful and sonorous. But it was not really more than that. I never, at any moment, sensed any real tension in the playing, any involvement from the podium. Considering the ultimately blah result, I wonder: What for? Who ever told Nagano he was a brucknerian? ::) After his lackadaisical, spent 9th and this polished but uninvolved 5th, I think the jury has enough evidence to damn him with the faintest praise.  Would that he'd turn his attention to repertoire where comparisons will not inevitably turn in his disfavour: some Martinu, Schmitt, Prokofiev, Nielsen, Villa-Lobos for example...

The house was packed.  2950 seats, with a real pair of buns on each. At first I thought people were showing up for the soloist and I wasn't sure all would stay after the intermission, but no, all these buns came back in place for the Bruckner. Dear Anton has always drawn big crowds here, and that can be attributed to the longstanding tradition initiated by Decker. He has the knack to bring fire and dedication to the orchestra when they play that composer's symphonies. He's scheduled to be back next season, which will mark the orchestra's 75th anniversary. I hope he conducts some Bruckner (I'd love to hear him in the 8th!).

M forever

Tomorrow night, I am going to the BSO. They will play Bartók’s 3rd piano concerto with András Schiff and Schubert's Great C major symphony - probably my favorite piece of music. The baton will be operated by Bernard Haitink.

toledobass

Next Sunday a cello friend will be performing a recital that I've been looking forward to since he first told me that he was thinking of doing.  The major works are Bach and Britten's first suite there are 2 filler pieces that I'm not sure what they are.   

Allan

Bonehelm

April 2, 2008

Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin
Lambert Orkis, piano

Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 2
     in A major, Op. 100 d
Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 1
     in G major, Op. 78 d
Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 3
     in D minor, Op. 108 d


Benaroya Hall, Seattle


As part of our orchestra's US tour in April.

Guido

Tonight I am going to the Cadogan Hall London to see RVW Tallis Fantasia, Finzi Cello Concerto and RVW Symphony no.5. I am really looking forward to it.
Geologist.

The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away

bhodges

Quote from: Guido on April 01, 2008, 06:50:16 AM
Tonight I am going to the Cadogan Hall London to see RVW Tallis Fantasia, Finzi Cello Concerto and RVW Symphony no.5. I am really looking forward to it.

Great program!  I don't know that Finzi at all...

--Bruce

bhodges

Tonight, the second concert of the MATA Festival, celebrating young composers.  The venue is a hoot: the Brooklyn Lyceum (below), formerly "Public Bath #7," with separate entrances for men and women.  Some of the tile is still on the walls (and even a little mildew smell as well). 

This will also be my first time with this Boston group, and I hear they are excellent.

Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Gil Rose, conductor

(All New York premieres)

Alejandro Rutty: The Conscious Sleepwalker Loops (MATA commission)
Ken Ueno: On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific Hypothesis, Ken Ueno, throat singer
Derek Hurst: Clades, Concerto for the Firebird Ensemble
Lisa Bielawa: Double Violin Concerto, Colin Jacobsen and Carla Kihlstedt, violins

--Bruce

Guido

Wow that looks like an excieitng concert - do report back!

The concert was very enjoyable, though the Finzi concerto was a little rough I thought. It is an immense work of the absolute highest quality and is probably his best work (I ama huge Fnzi fan) - an absolute must. Get the naxos recording with Tim Hugh - easily the best around, and it comes coupled the incredibly beautiful Eclogue for piano and strings, and the spiffy Grand Fantasia and Toccata. One of my favourite CDs.
Geologist.

The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away

bhodges

Quote from: bhodges on April 01, 2008, 08:29:31 AM
Tonight, the second concert of the MATA Festival, celebrating young composers.  The venue is a hoot: the Brooklyn Lyceum (below), formerly "Public Bath #7," with separate entrances for men and women.  Some of the tile is still on the walls (and even a little mildew smell as well). 

This will also be my first time with this Boston group, and I hear they are excellent.

Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Gil Rose, conductor

(All New York premieres)

Alejandro Rutty: The Conscious Sleepwalker Loops (MATA commission)
Ken Ueno: On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific Hypothesis, Ken Ueno, throat singer
Derek Hurst: Clades, Concerto for the Firebird Ensemble
Lisa Bielawa: Double Violin Concerto, Colin Jacobsen and Carla Kihlstedt, violins

--Bruce

This concert was notable just as much for the buzz as for the music: there must have been around 500 people packed into the space.  I overheard someone say, "It's a great night for new music," and it would be hard to disagree, with all the people crammed in.  (Extra chairs were brought upstairs, for the balcony ledge overlooking the stage.)  The clear favorites were Alejandro Rutty and Lisa Bielawa's pieces, although all four had their moments.  Rutty's work sounded almost like a Hollywood film score--sort of--interrupted with extreme dissonances and other things.  Bielawa wrote for Carla Kihlstedt, who sings while playing violin, so the obvious question is who will be able to do this piece afterward? 

I'm going back on Friday for the final concert, featuring two groups, Either/Or and Newspeak:

Either/Or
Richard Carrick: Towards Qualia
Andrew Byrne: White Bone Country

Newspeak
Missy Mazzoli: In Spite of All This
David T. Little: sweet, light, crude
Oscar Bettison: Breaking and Entering (with aggravated assault)

Members of Either/Or & Newspeak
Sean Griffin: Buffalo '70 (world premiere, MATA commission)

--Bruce

hornteacher

In a few weeks the Charlotte Symphony is playing the following:

Mozart's Ballet Music from Idomemeo
Barber's Violin Concerto
Dvorak's New World Symphony

Looking forward to it very much.

Danny

Next Friday/Saturday, octogenarian Leon Fleisher will be in Modesto, playing with the legenday and world famous Modesto Symphony Orchestra at the newly created Gallo Center for the Arts.  Look foward to these performances, I do. 

Sergeant Rock

Tonight in Ludwighafen, the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz in an all Russian program:

Stravinsky Scherzo à la russe

Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto

Prokofiev Symphony No.5

Renaud Capucon, Violin
Jac van Steen, conducting



Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

ChamberNut

This Saturday,April 12th (concert I've been looking forward to the most, other than Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 earlier this year :D)

DeBussy - La Mer

Bartok - Violin Concerto No. 1  Jinjoo Cho, violin

Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 Pastoral

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Mickelthwate

Shrunk

Quote from: ChamberNut on April 07, 2008, 06:53:09 AM
This Saturday,April 12th (concert I've been looking forward to the most, other than Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 earlier this year :D)

DeBussy - La Mer

Bartok - Violin Concerto No. 1  Jinjoo Cho, violin

Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 Pastoral

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Mickelthwate

I'm originally from Winnipeg, and as a student worked at the Centennial Concert Hall, so got to see lots of WSO shows for free.  How is the symphony doing these days?

Two of my most anticipated shows are coming up here in Toronto.

On April 12, countertenor Daniel Taylor and soprano Carolyn Sampson will be performing Handel arias with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. 

Then, on the 27th, it's a performance of Idomeneo by the period ensemble Opera Atelier, with Measha Brueggergosman as Elettra.  Toronto's a HIP town!