concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley
Jan. 20th, 2008 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThis was the first live concert I've been to since December 2nd, which by my standards is a fairly long drought. So it was nice to get some familiar comfort music.
First came an extraordinarily quiet, subdued reading of Vaughan Williams's gorgeous pastorale tone poem for violin and orchestra, The Lark Ascending. The soloist was the venerable Joseph Silverstein. And the conductor? There wasn't one. Silverstein nominally led; he gave a few cues by nodding his head, and used his bow to set time in a few passages when he wasn't playing. But otherwise the orchestra was on its own, with nothing but the notes of the solo to guide them. They must have rehearsed diligently, because it came off very well. Plain, effective; plush sound especially in the horn solo.
It was a little easier for Silverstein to do the same thing in Mozart's "Turkish" Violin Concerto. This was a pleasant rendition - it didn't descend into a dryly mechanical performance, but it didn't rise into transcendent beauty either, which the slow movement at least deserves.
However, as an encore Silverstein played a movement of unaccompanied solo violin Bach - I don't know this repertoire well offhand, but I think it was the Prelude from the Partita in E. This was utterly riveting all the way through, an awesome performance.
Afterwards we had Elgar's Enigma Variations. This is a work full of characters (from Elgar's life), and this was a performance full of character. The opening sections had some ensemble problems in fast passages, but the piece gradually came together. The slow, majestic "Nimrod" had a fine fluidity and tension of line, and both it and the contrasting "Dorabella" that followed gave a real sense of a person behind the musical portrait. And in turn both "Dorabella" and the following famous depiction of Dan the bulldog in the River Wye were actually funny.
But the best moment came in the cryptic "Romanza", where Michael Corner's clarinet played the Mendelssohn tag in the softest, most tentative and distant way over the throbbing of the ocean liner's engines in the drum sticks. The finale was cheerful and lively and drove the work home very well.
First came an extraordinarily quiet, subdued reading of Vaughan Williams's gorgeous pastorale tone poem for violin and orchestra, The Lark Ascending. The soloist was the venerable Joseph Silverstein. And the conductor? There wasn't one. Silverstein nominally led; he gave a few cues by nodding his head, and used his bow to set time in a few passages when he wasn't playing. But otherwise the orchestra was on its own, with nothing but the notes of the solo to guide them. They must have rehearsed diligently, because it came off very well. Plain, effective; plush sound especially in the horn solo.
It was a little easier for Silverstein to do the same thing in Mozart's "Turkish" Violin Concerto. This was a pleasant rendition - it didn't descend into a dryly mechanical performance, but it didn't rise into transcendent beauty either, which the slow movement at least deserves.
However, as an encore Silverstein played a movement of unaccompanied solo violin Bach - I don't know this repertoire well offhand, but I think it was the Prelude from the Partita in E. This was utterly riveting all the way through, an awesome performance.
Afterwards we had Elgar's Enigma Variations. This is a work full of characters (from Elgar's life), and this was a performance full of character. The opening sections had some ensemble problems in fast passages, but the piece gradually came together. The slow, majestic "Nimrod" had a fine fluidity and tension of line, and both it and the contrasting "Dorabella" that followed gave a real sense of a person behind the musical portrait. And in turn both "Dorabella" and the following famous depiction of Dan the bulldog in the River Wye were actually funny.
But the best moment came in the cryptic "Romanza", where Michael Corner's clarinet played the Mendelssohn tag in the softest, most tentative and distant way over the throbbing of the ocean liner's engines in the drum sticks. The finale was cheerful and lively and drove the work home very well.
