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

[Opus106]

Going through the VPO's website, I found that Mehta, Lang Lang and the orchestra will be performing in Mumbai in a week from now. I wish I could have looked forward to it.  Mozart, Chopin and Beethoven are in store.


P.S.: I also learnt that Lang is actually a valid English word. 

[karlhenning]

(I didn't even know they debuted anymore).

Gotta start sometime.

[AB68]

Gotta start sometime.

Yes, but I can't recall the last time I saw a debut  concert/recital announced.  I thought it was a thing of the past. But I absolutely welcome it. I think it is very exciting to hear young musicians and to follow their careers.

[MDL]

Off to the evening concert in the Barbican's Xenakis Total Immersion day:

Programme to include:
Xenakis Tracees
Xenakis Anastenaria
Xenakis Sea-Nymphs*
Xenakis Mists
Xenakis Nuits*
Xenakis Troorkh
Xenakis Antikhton

BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Singers
Martin Brabbins conductor
Stephen Betteridge conductor*
Christian Lindberg trombone
Rolf Hind piano


I'm considering the afternoon concert, but I don't know any of the pieces. Anyone familiar with them?

Programme to include:
Xenakis Rebonds
Xenakis Persephassa
Xenakis Okho

Guildhall Percussion Ensemble
Richard Benjafield director
Catherine Ring solo percussion

[jlaurson]

This in light of the upcoming concerts of the BRSO in New York:

Mariss Jansons in New York

In light of the BRSO's upcoming trip to New York I spoke with Mariss Jansons, who I reached at his home in St. Petersburg. Having heard the impressive and surprisingly accessible world premieres of the last two works the BRSO commissioned, I was interested in how heavily he is involved in the commissioning of new pieces for the orchestra and whether there's a particular philosophy behind the commissions. Jansons, one of the most unassuming and pretension-free maestros out there, answers in his soft-spoken, accented voice: "I am very much involved, of course, when we commission works for my orchestra. But there is no particular "philosophy" I follow—except that I try to assure that the work is first rate.

---> http://www.weta.org/fmblog/?p=506

[Bruckner is God]

I have tickets to RCO/Haitink's concerts at the Barbican in London next weekend.
On saturday the program is Debussy's "La Mer", Mozart's "Haffner" symphony and Beethoven's seventh.
On sunday it is Schumann's piano concerto with Perahia and Bruckner's ninth.
Can't wait!

[bhodges]

Off to the evening concert in the Barbican's Xenakis Total Immersion day:

Programme to include:
Xenakis Tracees
Xenakis Anastenaria
Xenakis Sea-Nymphs*
Xenakis Mists
Xenakis Nuits*
Xenakis Troorkh
Xenakis Antikhton

BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Singers
Martin Brabbins conductor
Stephen Betteridge conductor*
Christian Lindberg trombone
Rolf Hind piano


I'm considering the afternoon concert, but I don't know any of the pieces. Anyone familiar with them?

Programme to include:
Xenakis Rebonds
Xenakis Persephassa
Xenakis Okho

Guildhall Percussion Ensemble
Richard Benjafield director
Catherine Ring solo percussion

I hope you went to the afternoon concert, too!  Didn't see this in time to affect your ticket purchase, but I have heard Okho, for percussion, and it's wonderful.

I have tickets to RCO/Haitink's concerts at the Barbican in London next weekend.
On saturday the program is Debussy's "La Mer", Mozart's "Haffner" symphony and Beethoven's seventh.
On sunday it is Schumann's piano concerto with Perahia and Bruckner's ninth.
Can't wait!

Great programs.  I would go for the Debussy and the Bruckner alone (but the rest should be highly enjoyable as well).

--Bruce

[MDL]

I hope you went to the afternoon concert, too!  Didn't see this in time to affect your ticket purchase, but I have heard Okho, for percussion, and it's wonderful.

Great programs.  I would go for the Debussy and the Bruckner alone (but the rest should be highly enjoyable as well).

--Bruce

Whoops, I forgot to put the date. It's this Saturday (7th) so I've still got time to book tickets. Or rather, one ticket. I think I've posted before that the other half, although willing to give a lot of modern music a whirl, draws the line at Xenakis.

Thanks for the recommendation.

[bhodges]

Oh great!  Okho is for three African djembés.  I've only heard it once, but it made a big impression.  Meanwhile, that is a LOT of Xenakis!  Have you plotted out your "cool-down" strategy? 

--Bruce

[springrite]

Oh great!  Okho is for three African djembés.  I've only heard it once, but it made a big impression.  Meanwhile, that is a LOT of Xenakis!  Have you plotted out your "cool-down" strategy? 

--Bruce

I assume after all that Xenakis, almost anything else can be considered a cool-down. 

[bhodges]

I assume after all that Xenakis, almost anything else can be considered a cool-down. 

Perhaps an afternoon of greatest hits by Patsy Cline.   

--Bruce

[some guy]

Tonight in Portland (OR) the ferociously talented Doug Theriault will be performing, along with the splendid Matt Hannifan and Tom Hamilton. I've been buying Theriault CDs like popcorn recently, but this is the first time I will have seen him live.

(For any Portlanders reading this before 8 tonight, it's at Enterbeing, 1603 NE Alberta.) 

[MDL]

Oh great!  Okho is for three African djembés.  I've only heard it once, but it made a big impression.  Meanwhile, that is a LOT of Xenakis!  Have you plotted out your "cool-down" strategy? 

--Bruce

OK, ticket booked for the afternoon bash as well. I've got a seat slap bang in the middle of the stalls which should be good because I understand that there's a bit of surround sound stuff going on in at least one of the pieces. I'm still smarting from the fact that when Stockhausen's Gruppen was performed at the Proms last year, the three orchestras were bunched together in the central area and only about a dozen or so people, squeezed into the tiny gap between the three, would have experienced the piece as Stockhausen intended.

I will, of course, be cooling down in the traditional English manner: ie, two gallons of lager and a dodgy kebab. Must remember to set the video for Harry Hill's TV Burp. The weekend just isn't a weekend without a bit of Harry.

[bhodges]

I will, of course, be cooling down in the traditional English manner: ie, two gallons of lager and a dodgy kebab. Must remember to set the video for Harry Hill's TV Burp. The weekend just isn't a weekend without a bit of Harry.

Sounds like a total blast. 

--Bruce

[aquablob]

Just returned from Angela Hewitt's performance of Bach's epic Goldberg Variations, with repeats and no intermission! Truly an astounding performance; suffice it to say that I echo DR's comments. Had the pleasure of meeting Hewitt for a few moments after the concert, also. A lovely evening!

[Lilas Pastia]

Lucky devil. A complete Goldberg must indeed be quite an experience. Were the surroundings appropriate to the occasion (meaning, not being a mile off in the distance) ?

[aquablob]

Funny that you ask...

When we first took our seats, we realized that sitting directly behind us was the same elderly couple that sat directly to our right at the last concert we attended (Pacifica Quartet). How did we come to this realization? The same noisy breathing machine. I do feel sorry for the ill old-timers, but there was simply no way we were going to sit near them again! (Not only is the breathing machine unbelievably distracting, but they have a tendency to "whisper" quite loudly and take well over a minute to unwrap cough drops...)

So we went to the ticket booth and exchanged ours for a pair of tickets up in the balcony, where the view was fine and the sound terrific.

[Lilas Pastia]

I never thought a breathing machine would be allowed in a concert  . In any case, only the best circumstances will do for those special occasions. Moving to the balcony was the thing to do!

[karlhenning]

Friday, April 17, 2009 at 8:00pm

Library of Congress

BRENTANO QUARTET
PETER SERKIN, piano
RICHARD LALLI, reciter

HAYDN: Quartet in D minor, op. 76, no. 2 ("Quinten")
WUORINEN: Second Piano Quintet (commissioned by the artists) Washington premiere
SCHOENBERG: Ode to Napoleon, op. 41 for speaker, string quartet and piano
BEETHOVEN: Grosse Fuge, op. 133

Oh, it's hey-ho for DC in April, for me!

Tickets for the concert were not available until this past Wednesday (the 4th).  I made a note, but (probably doing this in the wrong order) I wanted to book my travel first.  Found airfare improbably cheaper than the train, and went ahead and booked that last night.  This morning, on the Ticketmaster website, when I searched for a pair of tickets, I got a page telling me none were available.

Tried calling Ticketmaster, a surprisingly opaque journey.  Only took me three different phone numbers. Turns out (cannot be very surprising) there are not any two seats together available (and here it is, just the third day tickets have been available . . . a hot ticket, and none too capacious a venue) but the agent had two seats, one behind the other.  And so, all is well!

[MDL]

Bloody hell! After four hours of Xenakis (well, take off 50 minutes for intervals and stage reshuffles), my ears begging for mercy. Currently sat at the computer with a beer, listening to some nice, easy-going Ravel via Spotify. It was an amazing day. At 1pm, various young people (Sankorfa and the Guildhall Percussion Ensemble) blasted their way through an hour of visceral percussion music. Special honours should go to Catherine Ring and her heroic, fascinating solo Rebonds, but my fave was the eardrum-shredding Persephassa; the swirling, surging climax of that piece was astounding.

I didn't bother with the various films in the afternoon. Call me a philistine, but I was happy to walk around the City and grab a samosa on Brick Lane.

The main event in the evening lasted almost three hours and was split into three parts. I really liked the symmetry of the event: two large-scale orchestral works (Tracées, Anastenaria), a choral work (Sea-Nymphs) a piano work (Mists), and choral work (Nuits) and two orchestral works (Troorkh, Antikhthon). OK, big-medium-small-medium-big isn't especially sophisticated, but I found it satisfying. Hearing Antikhthon live, the first piece by Xenakis that I got to know and love almost 30 years ago, was a thrilling.

There was a much bigger turn-out for this Total Immersion event than for the Stockhausen not so long ago, which I thought was interesting.