concert review: Redwood Symphony
Nov. 24th, 2008 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacSo I'm in my own home synagogue, but not to attend services, or be bar mitzvah, or get married, all of which I have in fact done there. Instead I'm there to listen to a concert of music by Jewish composers. It's a beautiful temple, a warmly modernist design in a roughly circular shape with glass walls all around. I hope those who haven't been there before are impressed. I hope those who haven't heard the music before are impressed, too.
The main feature is Steve Reich's enormous Tehillim: four female voices and a battery of light percussion interweaving intricately above held strings. I have heard this work in concert before: although, like all Reich's music, it's fast-paced and choppy, I find it the most calming and mind-freeing music I know.
It is slightly insane for a non-professional orchestra to take up this work, but they manage. The singers are excellent and clear: perhaps too clear; this work rewards a little more fuzziness. The percussion players are diligent, but after the first couple minutes they can't quite keep up the rigid pace that Reich demands. They get sloppy, but they don't get sludgy, which would be fatal in this music.
Something similar happens with Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, for clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet) and string quartet, players drawn from members of the orchestra. The clarinetist is the key player here. A thin bald man with a polka-dotted bow tie, he has great command of his instruments, but he doesn't quite have the fluidity of the klezmer swing. It's a bit like jazz from those of whom Louis Armstrong said, "If you have to ask, you'll never know." He doesn't know it, but at least he knows of it.
The Suite from The Hours, movie music by Philip Glass, is mostly for strings with piano obbligato. The first couple minutes are a complete mess, but gradually they get into the Glassian groove and make a fair accounting of themselves, not too far out of tune. Beth Am's piano, usually restricted to accompanying our choir, turns out to be acoustically ideally situated for this sort of music.
Also, the Salomon Rossi Suite by Lukas Foss, not as winning a work as most 20th century re-creations of Renaissance and Baroque music.
Pre-concert, the conductor gives a talk on the history of Jewish composers, having compiled a list of what he considers the most significant names. Trivia question: which of the 20 composers he discusses is not Jewish? I don't mean the ones who converted, I mean the one who isn't Jewish either by faith or by background.
The main feature is Steve Reich's enormous Tehillim: four female voices and a battery of light percussion interweaving intricately above held strings. I have heard this work in concert before: although, like all Reich's music, it's fast-paced and choppy, I find it the most calming and mind-freeing music I know.
It is slightly insane for a non-professional orchestra to take up this work, but they manage. The singers are excellent and clear: perhaps too clear; this work rewards a little more fuzziness. The percussion players are diligent, but after the first couple minutes they can't quite keep up the rigid pace that Reich demands. They get sloppy, but they don't get sludgy, which would be fatal in this music.
Something similar happens with Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, for clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet) and string quartet, players drawn from members of the orchestra. The clarinetist is the key player here. A thin bald man with a polka-dotted bow tie, he has great command of his instruments, but he doesn't quite have the fluidity of the klezmer swing. It's a bit like jazz from those of whom Louis Armstrong said, "If you have to ask, you'll never know." He doesn't know it, but at least he knows of it.
The Suite from The Hours, movie music by Philip Glass, is mostly for strings with piano obbligato. The first couple minutes are a complete mess, but gradually they get into the Glassian groove and make a fair accounting of themselves, not too far out of tune. Beth Am's piano, usually restricted to accompanying our choir, turns out to be acoustically ideally situated for this sort of music.
Also, the Salomon Rossi Suite by Lukas Foss, not as winning a work as most 20th century re-creations of Renaissance and Baroque music.
Pre-concert, the conductor gives a talk on the history of Jewish composers, having compiled a list of what he considers the most significant names. Trivia question: which of the 20 composers he discusses is not Jewish? I don't mean the ones who converted, I mean the one who isn't Jewish either by faith or by background.
- Salamone Rossi (c 1570-c 1630)
- Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864)
- Fromenthal Halevy (1799-1862)
- Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
- Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)
- Max Bruch (1838-1920)
- Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
- Paul Dukas (1865-1935)
- Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
- Hanns Eisler (1898-1962)
- George Gershwin (1898-1937)
- Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
- Kurt Weill (1900-1950)
- Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)
- Steve Reich (b. 1936)
- Philip Glass (b. 1937)
- Michael Tilson Thomas (b. 1944)
- Shulamit Ran (b. 1949)
- Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960)
- Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960)
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-24 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-25 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-24 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-25 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-25 03:48 pm (UTC)Bloch's string quartets in particular are very underrated.
Don Keller
no subject
Date: 2008-11-25 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-25 03:53 pm (UTC)Don Keller