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

[Brian]

Tonight!

Peter Eötvös | Shadows (UK premiere)
Liszt | Piano Concerto No 2
Zemlinsky | Lyric Symphony
Alexander Markovich, piano
Vladimir Jurowski

Never heard the Zemlinsky, or anything by Eötvös. Four quid for a ticket!

[bhodges]

And wow, again. Looks like you are in for a real treat, Brian! The Zemlinsky is gorgeous.

--Bruce

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

And wow, again. Looks like you are in for a real treat, Brian! The Zemlinsky is gorgeous.

Indeed, a beautiful and moving work (if played and sung well, of course!)  And Liszt's Second Piano Concerto isn't bad, either.

[karlhenning]

I like the Liszt piano-&-orchestra works!

[jlaurson]

Walter Braunfels' Uhlenspiegel. Tomorrow in Gera.

[Brian]

The LPO program last night opened with a UK premiere, "Shadows" by Peter Eötvös. It's sort of a mini concerto for flute, clarinet, a percussionist with snare drum and suspended cymbal, and orchestra. It also calls for a bizarre orchestral layout in which some of the forces sit with their backs to the audience. A diagram is attached. I couldn't figure out why the orchestra was asked to sit like this based on the music itself: to muffle the brass? To divide the strings really dramatically? Aside from placing the solo instruments literally in the center of the ring, there seemed to be no particular aural advantage to this. Since the performance was recorded for a CD, perhaps the CD experience will explain Eötvös' decision.

As for the music itself: it fairly clearly was originally a chamber piece; the best movement was scored for flute and clarinet alone. At other points the orchestra interjected Scary Music chords, reminiscent of Jaws or noir, and there were some interesting coloristic effects - just neat sounds being produced by the ensemble as a whole or individual soloists. Still and all, I'm not entirely sure I could deduce from listening why Eötvös actually wrote the piece. My cynical guess is he had a nice chamber duet sitting around and fulfilled a commission by arranging it up (N.B. looking at his website, this guess is wrong; it was originally for the soloists plus a small wind ensemble and handful of strings). It achieved interesting colors and sounds but didn't develop any sort of argument or even conversation.

Maybe it was this context, but I was far more impressed with Liszt's Second Concerto than I've ever been before. Alexander Markovich walked onstage and immediately captured attention, by means of being the most morbidly obese person I've ever seen at a classical concert. It actually affects his playing technique, since he has to hold his arms up over his own girth. But, as my friend pointed out, it also affects his theatricality, because his rather large face amplifies any sort of feelings he's going through - feelings of intensity, or wicked grins, sort of bubble across the chins. At any rate, his pianism had absolutely everything Liszt demands: brilliant technique, great poetry, fire and brimstone. It was a fantastic performance matched by the LPO and Vladimir Jurowski at every point: I think the reason I liked the concerto so much in this performance, compared to so little on the Cziffra CD, was the excited, brilliantly on-point accompaniment, which played up the humor (!) in one of the central episodes and riveted everywhere else.

Google reveals a blogger says Markovich had "the unalloyed joy of a five-year-old." That's basically true, and part of his appeal. Plus, he played an encore of enormous wit and good humor, all the way through which he grinned like a little kid and seemed to watch his own fingers the way a child watches cookies baking or Michael Jordan playing ball. It was a piano arrangement of Waldteufel's Les patineurs, souped up to be absurdly difficult and merrily silly. I suspected Godowsky, but his unofficial website's list of works doesn't allude to Waldteufel at all. Samuil Feinberg and Marc-Andre Hamelin similarly pleaded innocence. Heck, I'll claim to have written it. Markovich had a blast, so we all did too.

After the interval came Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony, with soprano Melanie Diener and no less than Thomas Hampson taking the baritone role. I'd never heard the piece before, and on first listen, it has some riveting sections and a couple which were less appealing. One problem was Diener, who struggled to make herself heard. Hampson, of course, is a class act, and every one of his songs was a stunner. The orchestral accompaniment is a miracle of music-making, for it has all the wild movement and oscillation of an oceanscape, uses huge numbers of instruments really well, and transitions from one mood to another really easily. If a couple songs let me down, others were gripping; my friend lost interest halfway through (it is 48 minutes), but that was sad because my favorite part was the very last, when Hampson took a seat and the orchestra wound down to a blissful, breathtaking conclusion. Note to Eötvös and others of his brand: the reason you introduce a mood, usually (Vier letzte lieder is a good counterexample) is to contrast it with something. Zemlinsky's piece really captured my imagination because after all that sturm und drang, after all the volatility and uncertainty, that final wind-down felt like going home, or a leaf falling gently to the ground. Or maybe a hard day's night.

[karlhenning]

Glad your estimation of the Liszt Second Concerto had occasion to improve, Brian!

[Brian]

Google reveals a blogger says Markovich had "the unalloyed joy of a five-year-old." That's basically true, and part of his appeal. Plus, he played an encore of enormous wit and good humor, all the way through which he grinned like a little kid and seemed to watch his own fingers the way a child watches cookies baking or Michael Jordan playing ball. It was a piano arrangement of Waldteufel's Les patineurs, souped up to be absurdly difficult and merrily silly. I suspected Godowsky, but his unofficial website's list of works doesn't allude to Waldteufel at all. Samuil Feinberg and Marc-Andre Hamelin similarly pleaded innocence. Heck, I'll claim to have written it. Markovich had a blast, so we all did too.

"London Philharmonic Orchestra" just commented on my blog post to say that Markovich arranged the piece himself.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Excellent piece of writing, Brian! Thank you! I am especially glad to see you liked the Liszt - the Second Piano Concerto has always been a favourite of mine. It is an impeccably-judged one-movement structure. And the ending, when done with panache, is thrilling.

[Florestan]

Tonight:

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8

Nikolai Demidenko
Cristian Mandeal
Romanian NRSO

[Brian]

Tonight!

Mozart | String Quartet in C "Dissonance"
G.F. Haas | String Quartet No 6 (UK premiere)
Shostakovich | String Quartet No 8

Hagen Quartet
Wigmore Hall

I've never heard the Mozart or Haas works before. In the words of noted classical music aficionado Barney Stinson, "It is ON!"

[bhodges]

Tonight!

Mozart | String Quartet in C "Dissonance"
G.F. Haas | String Quartet No 6 (UK premiere)
Shostakovich | String Quartet No 8

Hagen Quartet
Wigmore Hall

I've never heard the Mozart or Haas works before. In the words of noted classical music aficionado Barney Stinson, "It is ON!"

Sounds fantastic! Do report back. I'm especially curious about the Haas, since I've just discovered some of his work in the last 3 months or so.

--Bruce

[Brian]

Sounds fantastic! Do report back. I'm especially curious about the Haas, since I've just discovered some of his work in the last 3 months or so.

--Bruce

Well, I had an experience I have never, ever had before at a concert hall. The Haas was a - you'd given me a much nicer term for it a couple pages back, but can I call it "sound effects"? - it was a "sound effects" piece, lots of insistent weaving between two neighboring tones, a little more than 20 minutes of it in fact, as the musicians clambered through different harmonies/harmonics and produced piercing sounds. It was not exactly a work with a narrative, or even a work with a tone in the literary sense; it had little my parents would even consider music.

But that wasn't the new experience. The thing I'd never encountered before was a Lithuanian guy sitting next to me, wearing a suit and looking to be around 50. He obviously disliked the Haas. I couldn't exactly blame him, as it's not my "type," but he started nodding off. Then he caught himself, leaned forward, put his head in his hands, and started dozing again. Then he caught himself, laughed, mumbled something, and reached in his pocket.

The guy pulled out earbuds, inserted them into his ears, whipped out a smartphone, turned on its radio, and tuned into a techno station. DURING THE CONCERT. I couldn't believe it. I almost burst out laughing. The woman in front of us turned her head and stared, not so much in outrage as in astonishment. Meanwhile, this guy stared ahead at the performers, looking for all the world like any other listener, except he had earbuds in and they were audibly supplying a techno beat.

I can't say I was annoyed enough to tell him to shove it. For starters, he was texting in Lithuanian (his text included something about "Wigmore" and "tragèdija," presumably the tragèdija of his having to listen to new music: and that's a Lithuanian word, according to Google), so I didn't know if he spoke English. But more importantly, I made a philosophical decision. I decided that I wasn't listening to Georg Friedrich Haas... I was listening to the ghost of Charles Ives. 

(Incidentally, the Mozart was fun, although pretty obviously hyper-romanticized - REALLY sounded like heroic Beethoven - and the Shostakovich performance sizzled with dark energy. The fade-out on the final chord was so breathtakingly perfect that everyone in the room, except my Lithuanian neighbor who was still texting, strained their ears to hear when they'd stop playing, but everyone missed it because the slide into silence was so remarkably well-done.)

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Wow.  That's even worse than the woman two seats away from me during one of last year's Proms, who held up a broadsheet newspaper in front of her all the way through Bruckner's Ninth Symphony (Blomstedt conducting) and kept noisily turning pages and refolding it whenever the music went quiet.

What manner of death was devised for her?

[jlaurson]

Tonight!

Mozart | String Quartet in C "Dissonance"
G.F. Haas | String Quartet No 6 (UK premiere)
Shostakovich | String Quartet No 8

Hagen Quartet
Wigmore Hall

I've never heard the Mozart or Haas works before. In the words of noted classical music aficionado Barney Stinson, "It is ON!"

They did that a few days ago in Salzburg. Unfortunately I was in Lyon and missed it. Catching lots of Holliger & Mozart & Haydn now, though. Villazon is on his way to being a baritone, from the sound of it. Then the night-train to Vienna to hang out with a friend who is playing Brahms d-minor that day. Then off to Wigmore.

[bhodges]

The guy pulled out earbuds, inserted them into his ears, whipped out a smartphone, turned on its radio, and tuned into a techno station. DURING THE CONCERT. I couldn't believe it. I almost burst out laughing. The woman in front of us turned her head and stared, not so much in outrage as in astonishment. Meanwhile, this guy stared ahead at the performers, looking for all the world like any other listener, except he had earbuds in and they were audibly supplying a techno beat.

   

A new low in concert hall behavior! Like you, I would have been tempted to laugh, at someone who is so (apparently) unhappy with the program, and determined to "fix" the situation. ("Erm, perhaps you would have had a better time...AT HOME?")

Thanks, that vignette is quite an eye-opener.

PS, and thanks for the comments on the rest of the program. Your description of the Haas sounds like comments on other works of his I've heard.

--Bruce

[Wendell_E]

Sunday, January 30th
Mobile Chamber Music Society
Quatuor Diotima

Onslow: String Quartet no. 29 in d minor, op 55
Czernowin: Anea Crystal
Ravel: Quartet

If nothing else, it'll be fun watching the blue-haired ladies' heads explode during the Czenowin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-eNtIZcYsk

   

Wow, a very imaginative program! Do report back. (And on the detonating heads, as well.)

--Bruce

Alas, I suppose Czernowin was too much for Mobile, and the program was different from the one listed at the quartet's website, opening with Schubert's two-movement Quartet fragment (No. 5, D. 68), followed by a different Onslow quartet (no. 30, op 56).  After intermission, the Ravel, and Webern's early Langsamer Satz for an encore.  Still, a wonderful program and performance, even if I bought my plastic sheeting in vain.  I bought up a couple of the quartet's discs at intermission, a Schoenberg/Webern/Berg disc, and another of quartets by Dieter Schnebel (1930), whom I've never heard of.

[Brian]

There's also a mini-series of Barenboim conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin in Bruckner's 7th, 8th & 9th symphonies in April 2012, for anyone interested in that.

Oh, man. Why am I moving back to the United States???

[karlhenning]

No Big Gulps in London? . . .

[bhodges]

Tonight, the terrific sextet eighth blackbird, in this program. I love Mazzoli's title (and the piece is good, too).

Missy Mazzoli: Still Life with Avalanche
Pierre Boulez: Dérive 1
Philip Glass: Music in Similar Motion
Philippe Hurel: ...à mesure
Thomas Adès: Catch, Op. 4
Stephen Hartke: Meanwhile, Incidental Music to Imaginary Puppet Plays

--Bruce