kleine konzerten
May. 16th, 2005 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacHeard a couple small student-ensemble concerts at Stanford over the weekend.
The Stanford Wind Ensemble did well enough with some marches by Smetana and folk dances by Percy Grainger, but the highlight of the concert was a few 1920s solo-sax-and-ensemble pieces by a 1920s virtuoso sax player and pops composer named Rudy Wiedoeft, of whom I'd never previously heard, finely played by a senior named Joe Yu. Wiedoeft predated the jazz-sax era, so his music was tuneful and enjoyable. Also pretty good, a quintet (2 trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba) playing a medly consisting of 3 parts "The Saints Go Marching In" and one part "The Hallelujah Chorus".
The next day, a more serious concert consisting of various student groups playing assorted movements from classical chamber masterworks. This one included the entirety of the Franck Sonata [it is said that an unworldly classical violinist was once introduced to Frank Sinatra, and said, "I know the Franck Sonata, but who is this man?"], the first half in the canonical arrangement for violin and piano, the second half in the most common alternative of cello and piano. A great work in either arrangement. Also bits of Faure, Schumann, Dvorak, also enjoyable; a horribly out of tune Purcell trio sonata; and - unusually for one of these concerts - some vocal music, Ned Rorem's settings of Sylvia Plath. Plath's poems are horribly anguished, right? Well, so were Rorem's settings. It sounded like a parody of bad modernist art-song to me. Well sung by soprano Georgia Duan, though.
The Stanford Wind Ensemble did well enough with some marches by Smetana and folk dances by Percy Grainger, but the highlight of the concert was a few 1920s solo-sax-and-ensemble pieces by a 1920s virtuoso sax player and pops composer named Rudy Wiedoeft, of whom I'd never previously heard, finely played by a senior named Joe Yu. Wiedoeft predated the jazz-sax era, so his music was tuneful and enjoyable. Also pretty good, a quintet (2 trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba) playing a medly consisting of 3 parts "The Saints Go Marching In" and one part "The Hallelujah Chorus".
The next day, a more serious concert consisting of various student groups playing assorted movements from classical chamber masterworks. This one included the entirety of the Franck Sonata [it is said that an unworldly classical violinist was once introduced to Frank Sinatra, and said, "I know the Franck Sonata, but who is this man?"], the first half in the canonical arrangement for violin and piano, the second half in the most common alternative of cello and piano. A great work in either arrangement. Also bits of Faure, Schumann, Dvorak, also enjoyable; a horribly out of tune Purcell trio sonata; and - unusually for one of these concerts - some vocal music, Ned Rorem's settings of Sylvia Plath. Plath's poems are horribly anguished, right? Well, so were Rorem's settings. It sounded like a parody of bad modernist art-song to me. Well sung by soprano Georgia Duan, though.
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Date: 2005-05-17 03:00 pm (UTC)There's a book of arrangements for two pianos -- actually two books, each of which only has one part in it (making it really tough to mess around with it) -- that includes a version of the canon. My late piano teacher had these, and I always wished I could have found my own set. It included a good selection of standard pieces, mostly, arranged for two sets of ivories. Hmmm... Abebooks is my friend. Maybe...
Anyway, if the piano part wasn't so hard, I'd probably be trying to play that canon. Even just the accompaniment. Anybody who thinks Franck is cold should write a report on it. (In this case, I have a preference for the violin. The cello version I have sounds too low somehow.)
I have Rorem's "left hand" concerto, and have played it in my own presence a couple of times (on CD, not from sheet music). So far, it slips right off my brain, and I can't even say whether I like it or not. Maybe I'll put it on again today.
The sax pieces sound tantalizing. I'm still fond of the Glazunov-Petiot sax concerto, particularly in the one recording I've found of the piano-sax version, where the solo part really stands out. Love that cadenza. Someone I know once came up to me and said she'd listened to it when I asked for it on the request show, and she thought it was really dull. I couldn't quite figure it, but that's life. On the other hand, she took me up on the Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody and liked it so much she had the 18th variation played at her wedding.
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Date: 2005-05-17 07:07 pm (UTC)By the Sonata's canon I presume you mean the finale. Yes, a wonderful movement, and one of the most deservedly honored themes in the chamber music repertoire.
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Date: 2005-05-17 08:43 pm (UTC)I'll put in a word for my other big favorite, and the first Franck work I got into. Dad recommended it to me: the Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra. It sounds, to me, like an endless kaleidoscopic exploration of the basic germ of a theme that opens it. Try to get the recording by Robert Casadesus, and not just because Dad was going to study with him. He's the only performer I know of who doesn't throw away the trill that links to the finale. When he plays it, it's so perfectly measured, with accents on the beat, that I have been known to rewind and listen to that part over and over. Always with thrilled disbelief (as a pianist) that anybody could make something so delightful out of a sort of indecision between two notes. Four notes, counting the octaves. Kip gives it four stars out of four: it's right up there with Casadesus's jaw-dropping reading of Ravel's Left Hand concerto.
The finale of the sonata is a canon, with the violin playing the exact notes the piano does a half bar or a bar later, I forget which. Then there's that middle section. Mmmm. Then it goes back into strict canon again until the end. Not coincidentally, this is another piece Dad told me about, and he singled out the last movement for special praise. But really, is there a note of that piece that doesn't turn me into Happy Protoplasm?
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Date: 2005-05-17 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-18 01:23 am (UTC)Symphony #3. Even when it was an overdone cliche, I loved this one. It's another piece of musical comfort food for me, able to elate me in good times and cheer me up in others.
Carnival of the Animals: Drop the other one! I like this when it's not inflated to symphonic size. Nine players is all it takes, if I'm counting correctly. In my piano version, I've marked all the original themes I can identify in "Fossiles." Hm, I should work on "Hemiones" again. The finale is something I've gone back to a few times, but it's still too much too fast for me to play properly. I love to listen to it. The Paratore Brothers have a four-hand version that rocks just as much as the full version. More recently, Diz-nee used it as the basis for a hyperactive and poorly animated cartoon in which the sequential frames seem to bear no relation to one another, much as if they had shuffled a bunch of random drawings and photographed them.
Danse Macabre: Another chestnut. And why does Saint-Saens have so many? BECAUSE HE'S THAT GOOD. Horowitz played up a storm on this one. Gil Shaham has recorded it with piano accompaniment. The quiet spot near the end, just before the cock crows, has fooled several classical announcers into ending the recording prematurely.
Introduction and Rondo Cappriccioso: Concentrated joy in musical form, just like Mendelssohn's piece of the same name. A delight in any arrangement. Bizet set it for piano and violin. My favorite is Debussy's version for two pianos, in which every wonderful note comes through with fresh clarity. (Speaking of Bizet, his "Children's Games" for piano duet are some of my all-time favorite 19th century French music. Speaking of French music, Franck was Belgian. Speaking of speaking of stuff from up above, searching for a book isn't much good if I can't remember the name, and all I remember about the two-piano collections is that they were probably edited by Albert Weir, and that doesn't get me anywhere.)
Piano Concerto #2: My favorite concerto of his, and probably a lot of other people's as well. It's the one they keep playing on the radio. The opening reminds me of Beethoven's Choral Fantasia for piano, orchestra and chorus, in that order -- starts off solo piano, orchestra joins, then the singers come in. Well, the concerto starts off with a similar sort of cadenza. Not identical, just similar. The Saltarella is lots of fun, too. I keep putting the other concertos on, but so far none of them have grabbed me like this one.
Some Saint-Saens miscellany: Six piano pieces for left hand. The Dance of the Priestesses of Agon, from Samson & Delilah, which the composer recorded on a piano roll. To play it myself, I went and copied the relevant section out of the piano/vocal score and rigged an ending onto it instead of going right into Delilah's Song of Spring. I like his Mazurka for piano, which has some high-sounding opus number. Dad openly dislikes it, calling it one of SS's few potboilers, but I persist in liking it. It goes DEE dee, de DEE dee; DEE dee, de DEE d'dee d'dee de...
Did I mention that I'm tired? That I keep hitting two caps in a row and leaving the first letters off of words? G'night.