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concert review: Philharmonia Orchestra
May. 6th, 2008 11:48 pmI can't get to London this year, so London came to me on Monday, in the form of the renowned Philharmonia Orchestra, which came to Davies with its principal conductor, Christoph von Dohnanyi, whose peculiar hairstyle looked from the second balcony as if he were wearing a white baseball cap.
Dohnanyi didn't conduct any of his grandfather's music; that would have been far too advanced for this program, which was pure Viennese classics. Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (again; I've heard it three times this year) was well enough, but the evening belonged to Beethoven, in the form of the Egmont Overture and the Fifth Symphony.
In his music, the Philharmonia was an orchestra with a big strong bottom. No, silly boy, that just means that the sound was dominated by the lower instruments: the cellos, string basses, and the timpani. The winds and brass growled and squeaked a little, but they couldn't compete.
The Egmont was taken in a slow and deliberate manner that well suited this sound; the Fifth was a bit more of a skim-the-surface performance, but with this kind of sonic heft, the total effect was not at all superficial. I was pretty satisfied with this one.
I've gotten to a couple more student concerts. Another Stanford undergraduate flutist proved superior to the ones I heard last week: her tone was full and mellow, and her only problems were a plonkiness of phrasing and a tendency to take noisy gasping breaths. But considering that she was playing the Franck Sonata, which was written for a violin and takes no account of flutists' breathing needs, the latter was excusable. The former will improve with maturity, but since she's not even a music major but (the program said) is going into marine resource management - well, there's more money in that - she may not get much chance to acquire it.
Even more fun was a concert that formed the culmination of this term's undergraduate chamber music class at San Jose State. Two string quartets, two piano trios, and a flute-cello-piano trio each came on stage and played a movement each. Then, everybody came back out and formed the orchestra for a movement from a Bach double concerto for oboe and violin, with two more students as the soloists.
True to the purpose of the class, all these groups showed fine ensemble in terms of reacting to each others' tempo and phrasing. Now, if only they'd also picked up on each others' tuning as well and tried to stay in the same key - well, maybe that's the subject for next term's class.
Dohnanyi didn't conduct any of his grandfather's music; that would have been far too advanced for this program, which was pure Viennese classics. Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (again; I've heard it three times this year) was well enough, but the evening belonged to Beethoven, in the form of the Egmont Overture and the Fifth Symphony.
In his music, the Philharmonia was an orchestra with a big strong bottom. No, silly boy, that just means that the sound was dominated by the lower instruments: the cellos, string basses, and the timpani. The winds and brass growled and squeaked a little, but they couldn't compete.
The Egmont was taken in a slow and deliberate manner that well suited this sound; the Fifth was a bit more of a skim-the-surface performance, but with this kind of sonic heft, the total effect was not at all superficial. I was pretty satisfied with this one.
I've gotten to a couple more student concerts. Another Stanford undergraduate flutist proved superior to the ones I heard last week: her tone was full and mellow, and her only problems were a plonkiness of phrasing and a tendency to take noisy gasping breaths. But considering that she was playing the Franck Sonata, which was written for a violin and takes no account of flutists' breathing needs, the latter was excusable. The former will improve with maturity, but since she's not even a music major but (the program said) is going into marine resource management - well, there's more money in that - she may not get much chance to acquire it.
Even more fun was a concert that formed the culmination of this term's undergraduate chamber music class at San Jose State. Two string quartets, two piano trios, and a flute-cello-piano trio each came on stage and played a movement each. Then, everybody came back out and formed the orchestra for a movement from a Bach double concerto for oboe and violin, with two more students as the soloists.
True to the purpose of the class, all these groups showed fine ensemble in terms of reacting to each others' tempo and phrasing. Now, if only they'd also picked up on each others' tuning as well and tried to stay in the same key - well, maybe that's the subject for next term's class.
