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calimacHad a long phone talk with my editor a couple days ago about upcoming concerts. Wound up with three or four concerts to review in the next month, and declined one other because it's the evening of the day our nephew is getting married. (I'll go anyway if we get home in time and I feel up to it, because it sounds a delicious concert, but I can't count on it.) That, I thought, was the end of it.
So today I get an e-mail from the assistant editor. Where's the preview of that same concert? she asks. What? Was I asked to write a preview without realizing it? Ack! Monday is the normal deadline day, so I'd have to rush around to put something together.
I'd also have to re-listen to one of the pieces, which I haven't heard in a long time and which I only have on LP. I pull out the LP, remove the disc from the jacket, and ... it's the wrong disc. What? Has it always been wrong and I never noticed? But I'm sure I've listened to this record before. Wait a minute ... I recognize this other disc too. Maybe I once had them out at the same time and just put them back in the wrong jackets. Hunt around on the shelves ... yes, there's the other disc's jacket, and sure enough, it has the first jacket's LP inside. Phew.
Just when I finish doing that, I get another call from my editor. Mistake; no preview is needed. Well, good; then I don't have to stay home from my preferred outing tonight to write it. On the other hand, no surprise found paycheck either.
So I'll briefly tell you about it, instead. It's this concert on October 24. I've heard this group, Cadenza, under their old name of the Santa Cruz Chamber Orchestra, twice before. There's a lot of good local groups hiding out in obscure places, and this one hides in the Catholic parish church that succeeded the Santa Cruz Mission, which is on the same square. One mostly Nordic and one Latin American concert showed some cool, elegant performers with a flair for intriguing repertory.
Same with this concert. The composer on offer you're least likely to have heard of, Peteris Vasks, is from Latvia. Not the first Eastern European country that usually comes to mind. If you know the music of Henryk Górecki (Polish) or Arvo Pärt (Estonian), you'll have some idea of Vasks. Hefty, solemn, deeply tonal music, with something of a minimalist sensibility but without any of the mechanical tone that irritates some about minimalism: the American composer most like them is Hovhaness. Vasks has more of the Scandinavian wintry air than either Górecki or Pärt. I like him a lot; I think he's one of the greatest living composers.
The works by Arthur Honegger - he was one of Les Six, the young French wits of the 1920s of whom Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud are the best-known - and Shostakovich are relics of the bright, brittle, cheeky style that was fashionable in the 20s and 30s. Both are for strings with trumpet, how about that. (And of course the Shostakovich is a piano concerto so it has the piano as well.) To say more about that, that's what I need to re-listen to the Honegger for. But no time now; my other calls await.
So today I get an e-mail from the assistant editor. Where's the preview of that same concert? she asks. What? Was I asked to write a preview without realizing it? Ack! Monday is the normal deadline day, so I'd have to rush around to put something together.
I'd also have to re-listen to one of the pieces, which I haven't heard in a long time and which I only have on LP. I pull out the LP, remove the disc from the jacket, and ... it's the wrong disc. What? Has it always been wrong and I never noticed? But I'm sure I've listened to this record before. Wait a minute ... I recognize this other disc too. Maybe I once had them out at the same time and just put them back in the wrong jackets. Hunt around on the shelves ... yes, there's the other disc's jacket, and sure enough, it has the first jacket's LP inside. Phew.
Just when I finish doing that, I get another call from my editor. Mistake; no preview is needed. Well, good; then I don't have to stay home from my preferred outing tonight to write it. On the other hand, no surprise found paycheck either.
So I'll briefly tell you about it, instead. It's this concert on October 24. I've heard this group, Cadenza, under their old name of the Santa Cruz Chamber Orchestra, twice before. There's a lot of good local groups hiding out in obscure places, and this one hides in the Catholic parish church that succeeded the Santa Cruz Mission, which is on the same square. One mostly Nordic and one Latin American concert showed some cool, elegant performers with a flair for intriguing repertory.
Same with this concert. The composer on offer you're least likely to have heard of, Peteris Vasks, is from Latvia. Not the first Eastern European country that usually comes to mind. If you know the music of Henryk Górecki (Polish) or Arvo Pärt (Estonian), you'll have some idea of Vasks. Hefty, solemn, deeply tonal music, with something of a minimalist sensibility but without any of the mechanical tone that irritates some about minimalism: the American composer most like them is Hovhaness. Vasks has more of the Scandinavian wintry air than either Górecki or Pärt. I like him a lot; I think he's one of the greatest living composers.
The works by Arthur Honegger - he was one of Les Six, the young French wits of the 1920s of whom Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud are the best-known - and Shostakovich are relics of the bright, brittle, cheeky style that was fashionable in the 20s and 30s. Both are for strings with trumpet, how about that. (And of course the Shostakovich is a piano concerto so it has the piano as well.) To say more about that, that's what I need to re-listen to the Honegger for. But no time now; my other calls await.
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Date: 2009-10-06 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 05:45 pm (UTC)For a quick taste on YouTube of typical Vasks, there are his vocal-orchestral Dona Nobis Pacem here and a three-movement work for strings beginning here.