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

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

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Sergeant Rock

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"

bhodges

Quote from: stingo on May 04, 2008, 06:15:59 AM
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
Christine Brewer, soprano
Michaela Kaune, soprano
Marisol Montalvo, soprano
Stephanie Blythe, mezzo-soprano
Charlotte Hellekant, mezzo-soprano
Vinson Cole, tenor
Franco Pomponi, baritone
James Morris, bass
The Philadelphia Singers Chorale,  David Hayes, music director
Westminster Symphonic Choir,  Joe Miller, music director
Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia,  Alan Harler, music director
The American Boychoir,  Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, music director

MAHLER  Symphony No. 8 ("Symphony of a Thousand")

M8, live. Wow. A little slower than I would've liked but not distractingly so. The female soloists were uniformly excellent, and the male soloists were good, but inaudible sometimes when singing with the chorus. Still, what a thrill to actually be there. As good as recordings are, there's nothing like hearing it live. They were recording for a possible CD release, which I will buy if/when it does come out.

Thanks for these comments!  I'm hearing the same concert tomorrow night at Carnegie Hall.  The one minus: Carnegie has no pipe organ, so they'll be using the little electronic number they wheel out for such occasions.  But never mind, I'm still excited.

--Bruce

M forever

Speaking of Carnegie Hall, M will be in New York next week. Last time I was there (2 weeks ago), I went to Lincoln Center and heard the New York Philharmonic conducted by Charles Dutoit with André Watts as soloist in (I think he stepped in for an indisposed Martha Argerich). After opening the program with a light-footed Overture to Le Nozze di Figaro, they played Beethoven's 1st piano concerto, fairly lean and straightforward, rather "classicist" but not without fine musical nuances and Watts played his part with crisp rhythm and articulation and, something you see rarely these days, with the music in front of him. After the intermission, Dutoit led a fabulous, very spirited and virtuoso performance of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances with the NYP in top form and also playing rather more animated and into it (especially the string sections which played *together as a group* very well, not just all together in a technical sense) than you often see American orchestras play. The evening ended with a richly nuanced, sonorous and very stylish reading of Ravel's La Valse. Although the acoustics in Avery Fisher Hall aren't exactly good, I found them a little better than I had expected (or rather, feared) after the many horror stories I had heard about the hall. Or maybe I was in a lucky spot (my seat was in the first balcony on the left side). The sound of the hall from there wasn't "great", but it was listenable. Still, I wish the NYP had a better home - the hall certainly is butt-ugly!  ;D Nonetheless, a great concert night!

The NYP won't be in action next week, but the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will appear on two consecutive nights in Carnegie Hall under the direction of Bernard Haitink. These are the two programs:

Thursday
RAVEL  Menuet antique 
PETER LIEBERSON  Neruda Songs 
MAHLER  Symphony No. 1, "Titan" 

Friday
HAYDN  Symphony No. 101 in D Major, "The Clock" 
SHOSTAKOVICH  Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 43 


I am not exactly a big fan of either the orchestra or the conductor, nor the combination of the two (last year, I heard a fairly mediocre and uninteresting performance of Bruckner 7 with them in Chicago), but it might still be a decent occasion to check out Carnegie Hall. I am just not sure I want to hear Mahler 1 yet again, for the 378th or so time, as nice as the piece is... Shostakovich 4 might be interesting though, so I am considering going to that concert or maybe even both.

MishaK

#644
M,

Haven't heard the Mahler here last week (heard mixed reports), but I may check out the Shosty 4 tomorrow evening. Will let you know how it goes if I go. FWIW, the Mahler 1 may have, for you, the possibly interesting curiosity that Haitink has dug out some documentation that claims to show that Mahler had intended the solo bass opening of the third movement to be played by the entire bass section, muted and pianissimo, but that he never found a bass section that was up to the job, so to get an approximation of the desired effect it has always been played solo. Haitink restores this in these performances to have it played by the entire bass section as supposedly originally intended. Hovnanian has a post about it. Not sure that will persuade you to hear it (it didn't do it for me), but thought I'd mention it.

M forever

I can believe that. I always held the opinion that the "solo" in Mahler 1 isn't really a "solo", just in the sense of one bass alone, not in the sense of "a solo!", if you know what I mean. It is obvious to me that by writing for 1 bass alone *with a mute* - even though this is often left off by players who want to produce themselves, and they usually play the passage too loud and too expressive -, Mahler basicaly wanted the darkest and most subdued color he could get in the orchestra. I can imagine he wanted that played by a whole section, with mutes, that should be a great effect. Apart from that, I can only echo what Hovnanian said there in his blog:

The lack of concerts in my schedule is no mistake. Even though it was not my turn, I volunteered to be on call this week to avoid the Mahler 1st Symphony. Over the years I’ve come to loathe the piece and so take advantage of every opportunity to get out of playing it. Unfortunately for me it is one of those things that comes up at least once a year. If I’m not mistaken, the orchestra played it at subscription concerts less than 12 months ago. What is the deal with that? I wonder if listeners get as tired of it as I do. Anyway, the frequency of programming makes for some tricky maneuvering in order to avoid it.

It does make me a little curious though to read Haitink did 4 full rehearsals for this, the piece isn't really that complex and a good orchestra should be able to actually clear up even the musical fine detail in 2 rehearsals or less. So maybe Haitink worked a lot on the fine detail? That might be interesting to hear after all.

Greta

So Sunday, I saw my first live Mahler, this that I had mentioned a while back:

MAHLER Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'

Houston Symphony
Hans Graf, conductor
Erin Wall, soprano
Meredith Arwady, contralto
Houston Symphony Chorus

Wow. The whole group I went with, it was our first live Mahler experience, and it was simply overwhelming. There is so much going on in the music that hearing (and seeing!) it live reveals compared to listening to recordings, it's fascinating. All the offstage stuff was a highlight, not to mention the percussionist who had to traipse 20 ft in the air to hit three VERY large tubular bells...

The performance was just fantastic, the best I've heard this orchestra over my visits this year, great chemistry with MD Hans Graf, and a far more dramatic and blazing account than I would have expected from his intellectual, refined performances earlier this season of other fare. It was nice to see them really play at full tilt! I will write more in the Mahler thread...

So I have one concert left in my HSO subscription - but I can't decide which one to go to...these are the last two:

May 9-11

RAUTAVAARA: Cantus Articus, Concerto for Birds and Orchestra
MOZART: Violin Concerto No. 4
SCHUMANN: Symphony No. 3, Rhenish

Hannu Lintu, conductor
Cho-Liang Lin, violin

May 15-18

FALLA: Suite from El Amor Brujo
RODRIGO: Concierto de Aranjuez
FALLA: Nights in the Gardens of Spain
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Capriccio espagnol

Hans Graf, conductor
Eliot Fisk, guitar
Shai Wosner, piano
Katherine Ciesinski, mezzo-soprano

I'm torn! I would really love to see Cho-Liang Lin, but the Spanish season finale looks fun and will probably be the better performance...and anyway I love Falla...  :)

toledobass

Quote from: O Mensch on May 07, 2008, 01:28:16 PM
M,

Haven't heard the Mahler here last week (heard mixed reports), but I may check out the Shosty 4 tomorrow evening. Will let you know how it goes if I go. FWIW, the Mahler 1 may have, for you, the possibly interesting curiosity that Haitink has dug out some documentation that claims to show that Mahler had intended the solo bass opening of the third movement to be played by the entire bass section, muted and pianissimo, but that he never found a bass section that was up to the job, so to get an approximation of the desired effect it has always been played solo. Haitink restores this in these performances to have it played by the entire bass section as supposedly originally intended. Hovnanian has a post about it. Not sure that will persuade you to hear it (it didn't do it for me), but thought I'd mention it.

Vanska has been doing the same thing in up in Minnesota.

Allan

MDL

An article from today's Guardian about Nono's Prometeo. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I'm going to the second performance on Saturday, May 10th.


Scribbles for a sonic revolution


People from all over the world are flying in to Britain to hear an extraordinary piece of music this weekend. By Marshall Marcus

Thursday May 8, 2008
The Guardian


For the past few weeks, I have been receiving some extraordinary emails. Today's concerns a request from some young Australian composers to attend rehearsals at the Royal Festival Hall in the coming days. At first, I assumed they lived in London, but it seems they are flying in from Australia especially to hear a particular piece of music this weekend. This is extreme stuff, but not an isolated case. Yesterday, it was an elderly German lady. Tomorrow, who knows? But then, something astounding is about to happen: the most remarkable piece of 20th-century music is set to hit London for the first time.

Article continues

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I've been living with this work for almost two years. In 53 years, I've known nothing remotely like it. So what is it - and why does it provoke such strong reactions? The composer, who died in 1990, is the Italian Luigi Nono. And the piece is Prometeo, a grand, haunting Promethean music drama, a labyrinthine meditation on the act of creation. It makes huge demands on performers and listeners alike, and is difficult to approach without real commitment (Southbank Centre, where I am head of music, has put notes online in advance, to help the audience prepare).
Over its two-hour-plus span, you will hear the cracking of notes and desperate breathing, as well as sudden, terrifying fanfares and unimaginably beautiful floated sound. This is sound as extremity, with no narrative action to help. But the rewards are phenomenal. Nono puts you in touch with your own listening in a manner I have never experienced; he provokes an organic line between musician, instrument, voice, microphone, speaker, concert hall and, finally, audience.

British composer Simon Bainbridge is an acknowledged expert on the work. "One of the most amazing features is the composer's ability to draw you into his time," he says. "I remember slowly being transported out of real time into this complex structure, which plays continuously for two hours 20 minutes; it could easily have been five hours. It's an outstanding achievement - to be able to transport the listener into that environment. At the end, it was a good five or six minutes before I could get back into clock time again. It's so monumental, so extraordinary, that it takes you a while to get back to life."

The forces involved are epic - four orchestras, a choir, solo singers and instrumentalists, narrators, two conductors, a sound director. Not surprisingly, it is rarely performed; only now, almost a quarter of a century after its first performance, is the work receiving its UK premiere. To understand more about it, it is worth considering what happens when we watch a normal concert. I use the word "watch" deliberately. In an age so dominated by visual imagery, watching is what we tend to do in concerts, with even the architecture of the halls collusive in this perceptual skewing. The stage is designed to be spatially divorced from the audience, and this "room within a room" separates the sound source from the listener, forcing us to listen across space rather than within it. It's no surprise that we are often looking when we might be listening.

Nono demolished this arrangement by placing the performers around the sides of the hall at different heights and configurations. Multiple loudspeakers hang throughout the hall, choreographing the sound of the musicians. The old centralised "listening-by-looking" stage vanishes, as the whole hall becomes a giant stage and listening instrument; the audience find themselves at the centre of this setup, actually inside the sound. The results are spellbinding.

It's not surprising that this game originated in Venice. With its history of grand, spatially inspired music from the Gabriellis to Monteverdi, Vivaldi and beyond, this is a city whose architectural contexts and decentralised plan provoked sound experiments. Nono was born in, and often returned to, Venice. As his widow, Nuria Schoenberg Nono, relates, Prometeo is inspired by the sound of Venice and was conceived for St Mark's - although the first performance took place in San Lorenzo during the 1984 Venice Biennale. The preparations were astounding. Architect Renzo Piano constructed a wooden boat-like edifice within the church, into which the performers and audience were placed. The Freiburg Sound Studio worked with Nono to develop the electronics, while philosopher (and current Mayor of Venice) Massimo Cacciari assembled an astonishing combination of ancient and modern texts for the libretto.

Who can blame our Australian composers for grabbing the chance while they can? I am reminded of the writer Rachel Holmes' words on first hearing Prometeo: "What does democracy and freedom feel and sound like? It sounds and feels like this."

Prometeo is at the Royal Festival Hall, London SE1, on Friday and Saturday. Box office: 0871 663 2500.





MishaK

M,

I just caught the Haydn/Shosty program here in Chicago. I thought the Haydn was superb. Very elegant, finely balanced and excellent string articulation. Shosty 4 is such a strange piece. I loved the performance, but it's not a gut wrenching intense sort of Shosty that Haitink does. It's more one that gradually creeps up on you. It's more measured, but there was a lot of detail that made it really worth hearing. Terrific woodwind playing. FYI, they are performing these programs five (!) times here in Chicago (preceded by four rehearsals). I guess Haitink is leaving nothing to chance for the tour. Which means by the time it hits Carnegie it will either be mindbogglingly fantastic or deadly boring from sheer repetition.  ;)

MDL

Quote from: O Mensch on May 08, 2008, 08:44:14 PM
M,

I just caught the Haydn/Shosty program here in Chicago. Shosty 4 is such a strange piece. I loved the performance, but it's not a gut wrenching intense sort of Shosty that Haitink does. It's more one that gradually creeps up on you. It's more measured, but there was a lot of detail that made it really worth hearing. Terrific woodwind playing. FYI, they are performing these programs five (!) times here in Chicago (preceded by four rehearsals). I guess Haitink is leaving nothing to chance for the tour. Which means by the time it hits Carnegie it will either be mindbogglingly fantastic or deadly boring from sheer repetition.  ;)

Interesting. Haitink and the CSO are bringing Shostakovich 4 to the Proms this year and I'm quite tempted, although they are playing Mahler 6 the day before. I've seen Haitink a few times in concert and he's always worth catching. He doesn't go for a shock-and-awe approach, but he always sustains interest and, crucially, tension, which makes his performances ultimately satisfying and rewarding. His performance of Mahler 6 with the London Philharmonic a decade or so ago in the Festival Hall was probably the finest I've ever heard live.

M forever

Quote from: MDL on May 08, 2008, 10:25:04 PM
Interesting. Haitink and the CSO are bringing Shostakovich 4 to the Proms this year and I'm quite tempted, although they are playing Mahler 6 the day before. I've seen Haitink a few times in concert and he's always worth catching. He doesn't go for a shock-and-awe approach, but he always sustains interest and, crucially, tension, which makes his performances ultimately satisfying and rewarding. His performance of Mahler 6 with the London Philharmonic a decade or so ago in the Festival Hall was probably the finest I've ever heard live.

And maybe the only one you ever heard live?

MDL

Quote from: M forever on May 08, 2008, 11:07:04 PM
And maybe the only one you ever heard live?

Don't be facetious. I've heard it live at least eight times, probably closer to ten. Other conductors include Tennstedt, Rattle, Fischer, Maazel... I'd have to do a bit of research to remind myself of the others.

MDL

Quote from: M forever on May 08, 2008, 11:07:04 PM
And maybe the only one you ever heard live?

Seriously, what's with the snarky comment? What did I say in my innocuous post that justified that kind of response?

Sergeant Rock

Quote from: MDL on May 09, 2008, 12:24:20 AM
Seriously, what's with the snarky comment? What did I say in my innocuous post that justified that kind of response?

M is suffering from PMS. You know how cranky he gets just before his period.  ;D

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"

Harry

Quote from: Sergeant Rock on May 09, 2008, 07:05:50 AM
M is suffering from PMS. You know how cranky he gets just before his period.  ;D

Sarge

;D ;D ;D

bhodges

Tomorrow night, this concert at Carnegie, with a world premiere by Charles Wuorinen, and Sarah Chang in the Vivaldi.  I don't recall ever hearing the Respighi live, so that will be a treat, too.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Sarah Chang, Violin

Respighi: Gli Uccelli (The Birds)  
Wuorinen: Synaxis, Concerto Grosso for four soloists (oboe, clarinet, horn, contrabass), Strings and Timpani 
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons 

--Bruce

M forever

Quote from: MDL on May 09, 2008, 12:24:20 AM
Seriously, what's with the snarky comment? What did I say in my innocuous post that justified that kind of response?

Nothing, I was just curious on what live concert experiences background that statement was based. A lot of people here know 2 or 3 recordings of a particular work but feel it will enrichen everyone else if they throw in their "opinion" that one of them is "the greatest ever" and you have a lot of people here who have never heard one of the great orchestras live but who participate in endless discussions about "the world's best orchestra" and similar nonsense, or they base their enthusiasm (to which we all are very entitled of course) on just one concert experience (see also 4 posts above yours) and of course, we are happy for them, but the information density and value for other people is just not there.

BTW, I also respect and value Haitink's very solid professionality and his refusal to clown around and try to come up with random musical ideas as a substitute for lack of insight and study, like so many other interpreters do. I have seen him many times in Berlin and twice in the past year (last year in May in Chicago, as I mentioned, and very recently here in Boston with Bartók's 2nd PC and Schubert's 9th which was, once again, very solid but nothing really particularly "exciting" or "interesting"). He does have some great moments though, for instance, the Mahler 6 he conducted in Berlin just before they made the Philips recording was very impressive. There is also a highly interesting recording of the same symphony with the Orchestre National de France. There are few recordings of Mahler symphonies with French orchestras, so it is highly interesting to hear how the ONF which has retained some elements of the traditional French orchestral style plays this piece and how they sound - and they do very well, plus it is obvious that Haitink led the performance with a clear concept because the balancing of the sections and the music context are very convincing.

MishaK

Quote from: MDL on May 08, 2008, 10:25:04 PM
Interesting. Haitink and the CSO are bringing Shostakovich 4 to the Proms this year and I'm quite tempted, although they are playing Mahler 6 the day before. I've seen Haitink a few times in concert and he's always worth catching. He doesn't go for a shock-and-awe approach, but he always sustains interest and, crucially, tension, which makes his performances ultimately satisfying and rewarding. His performance of Mahler 6 with the London Philharmonic a decade or so ago in the Festival Hall was probably the finest I've ever heard live.

MDL, FWIW, I heard Haitink and the CSO do the Mahler 6 here last fall which I thought was absolutely terrific. IMHO, Haitink's best work here so far. Again, not in your face, but a devastating emotional musical landscape nonetheless. Alas, the recording the CSO brought out on its new in-house label does not refelect the performance I heard at all. The recording is somehow congested, boomy basses, with the edges rounded off. It has no impact whatsoever.

M forever

Quote from: O Mensch on May 09, 2008, 11:57:16 AM
MDL, FWIW, I heard Haitink and the CSO do the Mahler 6 here last fall which I thought was absolutely terrific.

But then you always think the CSO is "absolutely terrific"  ;)