Concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley
Jan. 15th, 2005 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacBeen wondering when I'd get back to music, have you? I don't go in much for holiday concerts, so December is a slow season for me.
But things pick up in January again, and I'm here to tell you that Ju-Young Baek is a young woman with one of the most rich and powerful violin tones I've heard from anybody, male or female. And well-modulated too, as she proved at the opening of the finale of her concerto, where the tone lost not one whit of its strength as the notes climbed from the very depths of the instrument into the high registers.
The concerto was the Sibelius, an odd work which seems to have been slowly growing into the role of one of the leading violin concertos. As an interview for that position, this performance couldn't have been bettered. The orchestra was right there with her. Conductor Paul Polivnick, who's been here before, dived right into that rich Sibelian soul, directing the performance with the kind of passion you'd expect from a Dvorak furiant, especially in the bouncy syncopated sections. But this was passion at the service of musicianship, not of wheel-spinning or empty virtuosity.
The rest of the concert was good too. Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony also came out lean and fast, with the bones showing. It sounded fussy and contrapuntal, but in a good way, bringing out a closer similarity to the composer's Scotch than one normally suspects. We also had Stravinsky's Song of the Nightingale. This is a work of his French ballet period that's essentially an opera suite, and Polivnick treated it as one: the instrumentalists, from trombone glissandos to solo violin harmonics, were expected to behave as characters in a story, not just abstract music, and the performers responded splendidly.
The players were on their best behavior throughout: a few small ensemble flubs passed almost unnoticably, and generally they dazzledd with their virtuosity both as individuals and as a group. This is a great orchestra we have here, and nobody knows about it.
But things pick up in January again, and I'm here to tell you that Ju-Young Baek is a young woman with one of the most rich and powerful violin tones I've heard from anybody, male or female. And well-modulated too, as she proved at the opening of the finale of her concerto, where the tone lost not one whit of its strength as the notes climbed from the very depths of the instrument into the high registers.
The concerto was the Sibelius, an odd work which seems to have been slowly growing into the role of one of the leading violin concertos. As an interview for that position, this performance couldn't have been bettered. The orchestra was right there with her. Conductor Paul Polivnick, who's been here before, dived right into that rich Sibelian soul, directing the performance with the kind of passion you'd expect from a Dvorak furiant, especially in the bouncy syncopated sections. But this was passion at the service of musicianship, not of wheel-spinning or empty virtuosity.
The rest of the concert was good too. Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony also came out lean and fast, with the bones showing. It sounded fussy and contrapuntal, but in a good way, bringing out a closer similarity to the composer's Scotch than one normally suspects. We also had Stravinsky's Song of the Nightingale. This is a work of his French ballet period that's essentially an opera suite, and Polivnick treated it as one: the instrumentalists, from trombone glissandos to solo violin harmonics, were expected to behave as characters in a story, not just abstract music, and the performers responded splendidly.
The players were on their best behavior throughout: a few small ensemble flubs passed almost unnoticably, and generally they dazzledd with their virtuosity both as individuals and as a group. This is a great orchestra we have here, and nobody knows about it.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-16 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-16 10:29 pm (UTC)It can, and that's why I don't often much care for the Mendelssohn concerto, which despite some great tunes has a lot of screeching and scrawing. But the Paganini concertos, which are nothing but virtuosic display, are still enjoyable to hear.
The Sibelius concerto is what the performers make of it, I think. It can be tedious, but I think only if not played with enough vigor. Tuneful in the narrow sense Sibelius rarely is, but I do certainly find that the technical challenge didn't get in the way of the purely musical value of the work, at least this time.