calimac

Three concerts since I last wrote.

1. Orion String Quartet with Peter Serkin, at Stanford, last Wednesday. Said pretty much what there was to say in my review. Violinist has the same name as our nephew. Doesn't look like him, though.

2. If my trip to Seattle is going to be truncated, I'll make the best of it by squeezing in the Friday noon concert at Stanford before driving to the airport. Tokai String Quartet: Ginastera's Second Quartet, a little Turina, and a little .. of the inevitable, given this company ... Piazzolla. Fabulously good performers, especially given the context of what's usually a student practice series.

3. The Seattle Symphony. Saturday evening, in Seattle. My first visit to Benaroya Hall, a name I can only get right when looking at it already written down. A wood-paneled space with the visual tone of the interior of Disney Hall in LA, it's shaped more like Flint Center in Cupertino, a shoebox with balcony boxes running around the edges. Tapered in the back, so it probably has more focused sound back there than Flint does, but I sat near the side about halfway down the main floor, where the sound was hollow, echoing, and spotty, for the last reason in particular hard on the solo strings.

Program, conducted by Paul Goodwin, labeled as "KING-FM Listener's Choice." What a KDFC listener's choice would be like I shudder to think, if I could imagine the SFS programming such a thing, like really. Consisted of Bach, Handel, and the ringer of Mercadante's Flute Concerto, and since there aren't many flute concertos I guess it has to be played sometime. Given better solo work than it deserved by Alexander Lipay. Firm, fast performances of a good selection of B&H: Handel's Water Music Suite in G and Op. 3/2 Concerto grosso, and Bach's Suite No. 3 and Brandenburg 3, the latter my favorite and played here with only one player to a part, with particularly good work from the first viola.

Home now, more on Potlatch tomorrow.