two concerts

[calimac]

1. 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.

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

"Well, I'll tell you what. You guys stay in here and listen to the Gerhard, and I'll walk around in the lobby and repeat the word 'eventuation' to myself."

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.

[redbird]

I assume you mean to refer to Mozart and Haydn as classicists, not make a Marxist comment on their politics. (This might have gone right past me had I not been reading Ken MacLeod's blog recently.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

tyop f8xed

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm not a fan of Mahler either, but it's not his orchestration that bugs me, so that dislike is irrelevant here.

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.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I'll take your word as authoritative that Shostakovich shouldn't be inflated. That's my natural assumption anyway, that something simple shouldn't be puffed up for massed forces of trained athletes each to take a molecule of. I've yelled at the radio (at work, even) when they reach -- for the millionth time -- for some wretched orchestrated version of a Chopin valse, or for a Budapest Strings treatment of a keyboard work.

[rwl.livejournal.com]

I really like Mozart's 20th PC. The producers of the film Amadeus did too, as its middle section is used over the end credits. I'm hoping someday I'll get to see a performance of it, too.