concert review: Redwood Symphony

[calimac]

"Eric Kujawsky, music director of the Redwood Symphony, likes sometimes to lead his volunteer musicians into the thorny thickets of Eastern European modernism," my review begins.

No kidding. This is the fourth time I've covered this orchestra, and the third concert with Bartók in it.

Comments

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

You consider Bartok to be modernist? That's a term I associate primarily with post-war serialists and composers like Carter. And is Bartok really "thorny" at this point? He's been dead for 65 years and I believe should be treated like standard repertory.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Anything that still sounds like Bartók's Second Piano Concerto is still thorny and still modernist. That's not incompatible with being standard repertoire. A century ago, "modern music" was deemed to start with Berlioz, and that didn't keep it from being standard repertoire.