review and concert
May. 12th, 2009 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacSo I made my review of Saturday's concert a little easier on myself by copying the description of what Beethoven's Fourth is not from my LJ entry on the same. I consider this first-drafting.
One point that didn't get shoehorned in concerned those magical Ninth Symphonies. Beethoven, Bruckner, and Mahler all died soon after (or, in Bruckner's case, while) completing their monumental Ninths. Shostakovich, after writing his small, humorous Ninth, lived another thirty years and wrote six more symphonies. If there is a curse of the Ninth, this was the way to get around it.
So that's finished, but a reviewer's work isn't done. This weekend I'm reviewing a concert including a concerto with a young, prize-winning violinist. When, on looking her up on the web, I found that she was giving a free noon recital in the City today, I decided to aid my research by showing up for a listen. Her unaccompanied Bach was rich with overtones, and she had the self-confidence, and the command, to pull off a shameless Wieniawski showpiece full of doublestop glissandos, left-hand pizzicato, and other ridiculous stunts, with panache. Considering that her concerto will be that old indulgent warhorse, the Bruch G-Minor, I think she'll do just fine.
I rode the train up to the City, took a bus to North Beach and browsed around City Lights for a while, then walked back a ways to have an early lunch (at a tiny Japanese cafeteria serving katsu with this incredibly rich curry sauce on the side), up the hill to the concert, which was at a church where they rushed through mass in 20 minutes to be out of the way in time, and then took the streetcar out to shop at my favorite record store in the Haight. I'll tell you about my findings later. The point in recounting all this is the pleasure in going to a compact, highly urbanized city where it's actually possible to get around a variety of districts in reasonable time on public transit, together with a fair amount of good old foot exercise. I'd kind of half-forgotten about that; I can never do it at home.
One point that didn't get shoehorned in concerned those magical Ninth Symphonies. Beethoven, Bruckner, and Mahler all died soon after (or, in Bruckner's case, while) completing their monumental Ninths. Shostakovich, after writing his small, humorous Ninth, lived another thirty years and wrote six more symphonies. If there is a curse of the Ninth, this was the way to get around it.
So that's finished, but a reviewer's work isn't done. This weekend I'm reviewing a concert including a concerto with a young, prize-winning violinist. When, on looking her up on the web, I found that she was giving a free noon recital in the City today, I decided to aid my research by showing up for a listen. Her unaccompanied Bach was rich with overtones, and she had the self-confidence, and the command, to pull off a shameless Wieniawski showpiece full of doublestop glissandos, left-hand pizzicato, and other ridiculous stunts, with panache. Considering that her concerto will be that old indulgent warhorse, the Bruch G-Minor, I think she'll do just fine.
I rode the train up to the City, took a bus to North Beach and browsed around City Lights for a while, then walked back a ways to have an early lunch (at a tiny Japanese cafeteria serving katsu with this incredibly rich curry sauce on the side), up the hill to the concert, which was at a church where they rushed through mass in 20 minutes to be out of the way in time, and then took the streetcar out to shop at my favorite record store in the Haight. I'll tell you about my findings later. The point in recounting all this is the pleasure in going to a compact, highly urbanized city where it's actually possible to get around a variety of districts in reasonable time on public transit, together with a fair amount of good old foot exercise. I'd kind of half-forgotten about that; I can never do it at home.
