concerts in review
Every once in a while, one of those meme questions erupts: what's the first record you ever bought for yourself? The answer is always some pop album of the era, except from me. I still have the first album I ever bought right here: RCA Victrola VICS-6023, a two-LP set of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, an original instrument performance by the Collegium Aureum. I would have been 13 or 14 when I bought this at a small record shop in a nearby mall, because by my 15th birthday I was already well-established as a classical collector.
Much of my early record collecting was done by the principle of hearing and liking something with a number on it, and then buying more works in the same series. You like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, there's eight more to choose from. Well, one such work I'd heard was the First Brandenburg, and here I found the complete collection on just two cut-price LPs. So that's why this was my first purchase.
Strangely, after all these years of knowing the works, I'd never heard all six Brandenburgs in concert until last Thursday, when my editors sent me down to the Carmel Bach Festival. Does my review read as if I had fun? It's slightly whitewashed. Oh, the evening concert was no worse, and no better, than I described it, but my day was full of small frustrations that were mostly not the Festival's fault - in fact, one that was my fault, they solved - and that weren't relevant to the review, so I left them out.
( Assuming you want to read about it ... )
The Music@Menlo Festival has also been going on at the same time, but I've not heard a lot of it. On Wednesday I got to one of the free Prelude concerts, with a peculiar and unsatisfactory performance of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet. The first violinist's notes slipped all over the place, rarely landing on the right spot, and the crucial high A in the finale was simply out of his range. The cellist liked nothing better than to thunk his strings against the fingerboard. And the second violinist forgot to shave and played with his mouth hanging open, like a fish. Last night I went on review assignment to the Romantic period concert: again to my surprise, Menlo, who usually only give one ticket, gave two, so I was able to draft![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
athenais in to sit with me; more on that after I review it. And tonight I plan to hear more Brahms at another Prelude concert. Busy week.
Much of my early record collecting was done by the principle of hearing and liking something with a number on it, and then buying more works in the same series. You like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, there's eight more to choose from. Well, one such work I'd heard was the First Brandenburg, and here I found the complete collection on just two cut-price LPs. So that's why this was my first purchase.
Strangely, after all these years of knowing the works, I'd never heard all six Brandenburgs in concert until last Thursday, when my editors sent me down to the Carmel Bach Festival. Does my review read as if I had fun? It's slightly whitewashed. Oh, the evening concert was no worse, and no better, than I described it, but my day was full of small frustrations that were mostly not the Festival's fault - in fact, one that was my fault, they solved - and that weren't relevant to the review, so I left them out.
( Assuming you want to read about it ... )
The Music@Menlo Festival has also been going on at the same time, but I've not heard a lot of it. On Wednesday I got to one of the free Prelude concerts, with a peculiar and unsatisfactory performance of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet. The first violinist's notes slipped all over the place, rarely landing on the right spot, and the crucial high A in the finale was simply out of his range. The cellist liked nothing better than to thunk his strings against the fingerboard. And the second violinist forgot to shave and played with his mouth hanging open, like a fish. Last night I went on review assignment to the Romantic period concert: again to my surprise, Menlo, who usually only give one ticket, gave two, so I was able to draft
athenais in to sit with me; more on that after I review it. And tonight I plan to hear more Brahms at another Prelude concert. Busy week.