concert review: Redwood Symphony
Apr. 5th, 2009 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacA few weeks ago I attended a concert at the Noe Valley Ministry, which is on top of a hill. Yesterday's concert was at Cañada College. The Spanish name suggests a location down in a glen or dell, but no: it's on top of a hill. See a pattern?
Fortunately I've been to concerts there before, or else a combination of a change in the traffic flow since my last visit, a counterintuitive use of construction barriers, and a lack of signage might have confounded finding the theatre.
In fact there were three concerts going on in various places that evening featuring works I very much wanted to hear, and my choice of this one was an indirect result of having previewed it at editorial request. It wasn't difficult, though the result does come off like an abbreviated program note.
And the concert? The Redwood Symphony is a top-tier community orchestra, which means they're not professionals, but they are at least reasonably capable (most of the time: this time it was, just don't listen to the violas), and most of all, they all really want to be there, which lends a passion you don't always hear in professional orchestras. The roughness can actually help in music like this. The closing bars of Janáček's Sinfonietta are supposed to sound like the awful DYNNE (© 1961 Norton Juster), but they rarely do. And the strings in the lush opening of the third movement actually stayed on pitch, an amazing achievement by these standards.
Khachaturian's Violin Concerto, there was the rub. The orchestra was mostly fine, but I had to close my ears and pretend that the soloist was adequate, because ... well, let's say what we can for her. Good timing and rhythm, most of the time, anyway; obvious commitment to the music; I probably got more actual enjoyment out of this performance of the work than from the rather bland one I heard in LA in January. But I kept cringing at the same time: the enjoyment I got was measured in the gross, not the net. They take what they can get around here. I've never heard a concerto soloist more capable of swallowing her notes than this one, and the tone, the sound of the instrument, was so dull and featureless, yet also inconsistent, that it ought to be valuable for some purpose. I just can't think what. Maybe in K. 522.
Fortunately I've been to concerts there before, or else a combination of a change in the traffic flow since my last visit, a counterintuitive use of construction barriers, and a lack of signage might have confounded finding the theatre.
In fact there were three concerts going on in various places that evening featuring works I very much wanted to hear, and my choice of this one was an indirect result of having previewed it at editorial request. It wasn't difficult, though the result does come off like an abbreviated program note.
And the concert? The Redwood Symphony is a top-tier community orchestra, which means they're not professionals, but they are at least reasonably capable (most of the time: this time it was, just don't listen to the violas), and most of all, they all really want to be there, which lends a passion you don't always hear in professional orchestras. The roughness can actually help in music like this. The closing bars of Janáček's Sinfonietta are supposed to sound like the awful DYNNE (© 1961 Norton Juster), but they rarely do. And the strings in the lush opening of the third movement actually stayed on pitch, an amazing achievement by these standards.
Khachaturian's Violin Concerto, there was the rub. The orchestra was mostly fine, but I had to close my ears and pretend that the soloist was adequate, because ... well, let's say what we can for her. Good timing and rhythm, most of the time, anyway; obvious commitment to the music; I probably got more actual enjoyment out of this performance of the work than from the rather bland one I heard in LA in January. But I kept cringing at the same time: the enjoyment I got was measured in the gross, not the net. They take what they can get around here. I've never heard a concerto soloist more capable of swallowing her notes than this one, and the tone, the sound of the instrument, was so dull and featureless, yet also inconsistent, that it ought to be valuable for some purpose. I just can't think what. Maybe in K. 522.
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Date: 2009-04-05 06:16 pm (UTC)p.s. Phantom Toolbooth also a big all-time fave!
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Date: 2009-04-05 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 02:30 am (UTC)That video should also be available from a well-stocked video store; if not, let me know. I believe the overall title of that VHS tape was An Evening with Netherlands Dance Theater.