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zwei kleine konzerte
A promising morning turned into a rainy afternoon. Didn't keep me from two small concerts, which I might not have bothered going to if there were only one of them.
The Prometheus Symphony Orchestra is a volunteer group with some 50 members (about half the size of a big-time orchestra) which gives occasional free concerts. I was attracted to this one because it featured Kalinnikov's First Symphony. Who? Well, he died young, but before he did he wrote two large echt-Russian 19th-century symphonies akin to Borodin's or Balakirev's. (Who? Well, there we go again.) Long languid melodies, big Russian sound, really quite good. Never heard it live before; glad to have heard it this time. The deep echoing acoustics of a small, high-vaulted brick church in Oakland suited the work well and made the orchestra sound a lot bigger.
Also on the program, Copland's Rodeo (you don't expect letter-perfect renditions of music this complex from an amateur group, but they had the swing of the music despite the lack of technical perfection, rather than letting the lack of the latter freeze them out of the former) and a Boccherini cello concerto with a 6th-grader as soloist. It seems churlish to point out that she totally lost the pitch when reaching down to hold the high notes: one is still dazzled. A 6th-grader, wow.
The Stanford Woodwind Quintet is something quite different. Most of its members are Stanford music faculty and their fluency is complete. I enjoyed the imaginative Gordon Davies arrangement of some Debussy piano pieces, with lots of clever pairing; the way the players threw phrases back and forth during a Danzi quintet; and the forlornly jazzy cold-war-era work by a Hungarian state composer named Frigyes Hidas.
The Prometheus Symphony Orchestra is a volunteer group with some 50 members (about half the size of a big-time orchestra) which gives occasional free concerts. I was attracted to this one because it featured Kalinnikov's First Symphony. Who? Well, he died young, but before he did he wrote two large echt-Russian 19th-century symphonies akin to Borodin's or Balakirev's. (Who? Well, there we go again.) Long languid melodies, big Russian sound, really quite good. Never heard it live before; glad to have heard it this time. The deep echoing acoustics of a small, high-vaulted brick church in Oakland suited the work well and made the orchestra sound a lot bigger.
Also on the program, Copland's Rodeo (you don't expect letter-perfect renditions of music this complex from an amateur group, but they had the swing of the music despite the lack of technical perfection, rather than letting the lack of the latter freeze them out of the former) and a Boccherini cello concerto with a 6th-grader as soloist. It seems churlish to point out that she totally lost the pitch when reaching down to hold the high notes: one is still dazzled. A 6th-grader, wow.
The Stanford Woodwind Quintet is something quite different. Most of its members are Stanford music faculty and their fluency is complete. I enjoyed the imaginative Gordon Davies arrangement of some Debussy piano pieces, with lots of clever pairing; the way the players threw phrases back and forth during a Danzi quintet; and the forlornly jazzy cold-war-era work by a Hungarian state composer named Frigyes Hidas.
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Anyway, I think Kalinnikov looked familiar because my father wrote in a note on one of the pieces in my small copy of The Book of 1000 Songs, having to do with a writing credit on some venerable tune (the book dates to maybe 1918, and mostly used stuff for which the price was, shall we say, right) or other. Annotating that particular volume is a happy hobby of mine, and Dad was glad to help out when I showed him the book. (In fact, he asked me to find him a copy and I got one sent to him. Next time I go to his place, I'll compare notes.)