concerts review

I got to two concerts yesterday after the memorial service for the rabbi, both of them already on my list.

One was at a middle school up the peninsula: the Redwood Symphony, a local volunteer orchestra with often interesting programming. You don't go to a group like this to hear in-tune playing, but you can be charmed by a fine sense of ensemble. They played Sibelius's Sixth Symphony, a masterpiece you never hear, with plain unpretension and with just the right tone of indeterminate hesitancy that's due to its being neither in major nor in minor but in the Dorian mode. Also his "Andante Festivo" (all andante, no festivo), a short violin concerto by Saint-Saëns ("Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso") and a surprisingly professional but rather plain version of one of Haydn's "Paris" symphonies (no. 86).

The other was a group of assorted French musicians at le petit Trianon. First the Parisii Quartet gave a clear, classically elegant performance of Haydn's "Lark" Quartet; then baritone Jérôme Corréas sang Brahms's Op. 121 accompanied by pianist Philippe Bianconi; then Bianconi joined the quartet for a driving but rather aimless performance of Brahms's Piano Quintet; then all six of them got together for Fauré's song cycle on Verlaine poems, La bonne chanson, which was French coming out its ears. According to the program notes the composer disavowed the arrangement with string quartet, though frankly those parts sounded better than the rather overbearing piano. More the fault of the acoustics than the pianist, surely.

a mystery or two

There was one odd thing about the little amateur symphony concert I attended yesterday. This was the music director's short talk before the last piece.

He said two things I lot a little strange.

First, he introduced an account of how the orchestra's fortunes are looking up with a comparison to his equal pleasure in the results of the recent elections. I entirely share the political opinions he expressed, yet as a liberal - someone whose political philosophy is based on the right of people to have tastes that aren't mine - I was uncomfortable with this. I don't say that art and politics may never mix, yet there are occasions when personal political opinions are irrelevant to the point, and this was one of them. I just think of how unnecessarily annoyed I'd have been had our political tastes been different, and how there must have been such people in the hall.

He also mentioned having been to the San Jose Arena, or whatever it's called this week, for a concert by The Who, after which he wondered why classical music can't be this popular. Well, it beats me, too, though I'm actually glad of it, because I'd rather attend concerts in smaller venues than the San Jose Arena. Maybe he meant to shock us with the breadth of his musical tastes, though it didn't shock me. I'm not that fond of The Who myself, but they're an eminently worthy rock group.

No, what disturbed me was the arena. I once had the opportunity to wander freely into it to hear a concert: some country-pop singer I've since forgotten, I think it was Faith Hill. Nothing wrong with the music, but the sound - it was so horribly loud and the acoustics in that giant concrete echo chamber were so terrible, I couldn't abide it for more than a couple minutes and had to leave. A pity, as I went in intending to enjoy myself.

What I find difficult to believe is that anyone would venture into such a pit for a whole concert by a famously loud rock group who wanted to preserve his hearing at a delicate enough level to be an orchestral conductor, even a community orchestra conductor. Maybe he had earplugs.