two concerts
Jan. 27th, 2007 06:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimac1. San Francisco Symphony under Lawrence Foster. Weirdly bifurcated.
First half: two dark minor-mode works by the great classicists. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, elegantly played by Radu Lupu (big, shaggy, looks like the older Philip K. Dick). And a more galant rendition of Haydn's Symphony No. 95 in C Minor.
Second half: a Concerto for Orchestra by Roberto Gerhard. Pure modernist crap. No coherence at all. This is actually praised in the program notes: described by composer as "a high rate of eventuation." Bushwah. Lots of percussion: sounds like Anton Webern in the jungle. But muuuuch loooonger than Webern, hence even more tedious.
Followed by short ballet excerpts by Manuel de Falla. Too little too late. Should have left at intermission.
2. New Century Chamber Orchestra, conductorless string group under guest concertmaster Axel Strauss. Nearly empty church in Palo Alto: absent audience missed a good show.
Suite by Telemann, both steely and witty.
Awesome performance by soprano Melody Moore of Benjamin Britten song cycle "Les Illuminations". Texts by Arthur Rimbaud. Doubt that Rimbaud wished his texts to be printed in 8-point type in the program book.
Mahler's orchestration of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet. This is one quartet that actually works blown up to string orchestra size. (Some Shostakovich works more often heard this way are ludicrously ill-suited to it.) First two movements lacked some bite, made up for by perfectly flowing version of normally rather gallumphing finale.
First half: two dark minor-mode works by the great classicists. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, elegantly played by Radu Lupu (big, shaggy, looks like the older Philip K. Dick). And a more galant rendition of Haydn's Symphony No. 95 in C Minor.
Second half: a Concerto for Orchestra by Roberto Gerhard. Pure modernist crap. No coherence at all. This is actually praised in the program notes: described by composer as "a high rate of eventuation." Bushwah. Lots of percussion: sounds like Anton Webern in the jungle. But muuuuch loooonger than Webern, hence even more tedious.
Followed by short ballet excerpts by Manuel de Falla. Too little too late. Should have left at intermission.
2. New Century Chamber Orchestra, conductorless string group under guest concertmaster Axel Strauss. Nearly empty church in Palo Alto: absent audience missed a good show.
Suite by Telemann, both steely and witty.
Awesome performance by soprano Melody Moore of Benjamin Britten song cycle "Les Illuminations". Texts by Arthur Rimbaud. Doubt that Rimbaud wished his texts to be printed in 8-point type in the program book.
Mahler's orchestration of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet. This is one quartet that actually works blown up to string orchestra size. (Some Shostakovich works more often heard this way are ludicrously ill-suited to it.) First two movements lacked some bite, made up for by perfectly flowing version of normally rather gallumphing finale.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-27 03:52 pm (UTC)Well, I'm not exactly a fan of Mahler, but maybe the Shostakovich quartets would have worked better if he'd done it, instead of whoever actually did. I picked up a Beethoven quartet he reworked, but haven't managed to keep my attention on it so far.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-27 04:23 pm (UTC)Mahler's tinkering with Schubert is imaginative and subtle, but the bottom line is that this work is suitable for such treatment. Shostakovich isn't.
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Date: 2007-01-27 04:35 pm (UTC)