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concert, concert
Mar. 15th, 2005 06:52 amSo on Saturday I get a hasty phone call from my editor. Whoever was going to cover this string quartet concert the following afternoon had cancelled out, so could I do it at short notice and get the review in by the morning after that? Um, yeah.
So I skipped out on a Mythopoeic Society book discussion meeting and did the concert instead. Great excitement when the comp ticket proved to be under the name of the previous reviewer which I didn't know, but a little magic with the cell phone straightened that out. I wonder if other people had problems, for most of row C center-right was empty except for me, until the second half when people from elsewhere in the hall sensibly came and filled it up. Maybe that's why the performers sounded more chirpy in the second half.
And here's my review. When I make reference to things like "the strange flautato passage in the second movement," doesn't it sound like I know what I'm talking about? Actually it's effective hand-waving. I have a record of the Janacek second quartet, and I've even heard it live before (in a less effective performance than this), but I couldn't say I know the work, and this odd drifty passage coming from the viola caused my ears to perk up. After the concert I wandered over to the music library (that's the great thing about concerts on a college campus: there's always a music library around) to leaf through a score and try to figure out what I had heard. Ah, that looks like it was it, and it's marked flautato, i.e. in the manner of a flute, which it didn't sound like, but how much could it, really?
I'd have been happier if I'd had time to listen to recordings with score in hand, which I did the last time I was assigned a concert of string quartets I didn't know well, and happier still if it were an orchestral concert for which I didn't have to prepare. But one does what one can, and for me concert reviewing relies on subjective impressions anyway, and I've learned to go with the gut.
So I skipped out on a Mythopoeic Society book discussion meeting and did the concert instead. Great excitement when the comp ticket proved to be under the name of the previous reviewer which I didn't know, but a little magic with the cell phone straightened that out. I wonder if other people had problems, for most of row C center-right was empty except for me, until the second half when people from elsewhere in the hall sensibly came and filled it up. Maybe that's why the performers sounded more chirpy in the second half.
And here's my review. When I make reference to things like "the strange flautato passage in the second movement," doesn't it sound like I know what I'm talking about? Actually it's effective hand-waving. I have a record of the Janacek second quartet, and I've even heard it live before (in a less effective performance than this), but I couldn't say I know the work, and this odd drifty passage coming from the viola caused my ears to perk up. After the concert I wandered over to the music library (that's the great thing about concerts on a college campus: there's always a music library around) to leaf through a score and try to figure out what I had heard. Ah, that looks like it was it, and it's marked flautato, i.e. in the manner of a flute, which it didn't sound like, but how much could it, really?
I'd have been happier if I'd had time to listen to recordings with score in hand, which I did the last time I was assigned a concert of string quartets I didn't know well, and happier still if it were an orchestral concert for which I didn't have to prepare. But one does what one can, and for me concert reviewing relies on subjective impressions anyway, and I've learned to go with the gut.
