concerts review
Jun. 21st, 2014 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThursday evening I was in Benaroya Hall in Seattle, listening to the Seattle Symphony under its music director, Ludovic Morlot. Friday evening I was in Davies in San Francisco, listening to the San Francisco Symphony under its music director, Michael Tilson Thomas. Except for the wearying grind of the inevitable plane flight in between, I could get used to this kind of life.
This was the second time I'd heard Morlot conduct, and the second time I'd heard the Seattle Symphony in recent years, but the first time together. The program was an end-of-season blowout, a huge honking wad of Igor Stravinsky - all three of the famous and pathbreaking ballet scores he wrote in Paris in 1910-13: L'oiseau de feu, Petrushka, and Le sacre du printemps, to give their original titles. With two intermissions, the concert took three hours.
From the opening of The Firebird, this was luminous. The light transparency, translucent colors, and sheer vibrancy of the sound was something awesome, and fit well with an inner-directed, almost Impressionistic interpretation. It all sounded, forgive such an obvious point, very French. No wonder![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
randy_byers was so entranced by their Daphnis et Chloe a few weeks back. If they can play like this, that must have really been something.
The catch is that The Firebird is the last work by the early, Pupil-of-Rimsky-Korsakov version of Stravinsky. Petrushka and The Rite are by a new composer with quite different aesthetic priorities. (The first of at least three points in his career when Stravinsky would entirely re-invent himself.) The quiet, romantic portions, especially of Petrushka, were quite affecting, and the orchestral colors were vivid throughout - I was seated in front, just below the basses, so anything with them was prominent, and one passage of basses and cellos backed up by heavy brass jumped out dramatically. But, though some of the more dramatic portions worked well - the end of Part I of The Rite was especially powerful - the lack of angularity and the somewhat subdued drama wasn't for the best. Still, great playing, and impressive acoustics in the hall, even in the front corner. Worth the trouble, and I'll definitely be back whenever the Symphony and I are both in town.
SFS, meanwhile, is in the middle of a three-week Benjamin Britten festival (his centenary was last November). This week's piece was the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, a song cycle focusing on poems about the night: contemplative and introspective, with a pearly Peter Pears sound from vocalist Toby Spence, and an - as far as I could tell - error-free lyric contribution from principal horn Robert Ward. It was paired with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15, seemingly an odd choice though the two composers were friends and great admirers of each other's music. But, though the symphony is best known for its cryptic "toy shop" opening, the great bulk of the work is actually taken over by slow movements. These, especially the second movement, bore the weight of the work, with MTT placing great emphasis on long reflective solos that really brought out a similarity of air to the Serenade.
Also Copland's Danzon Cubano, which aside from chronology bore no relationship or similarity to anything else on the program.
This was the second time I'd heard Morlot conduct, and the second time I'd heard the Seattle Symphony in recent years, but the first time together. The program was an end-of-season blowout, a huge honking wad of Igor Stravinsky - all three of the famous and pathbreaking ballet scores he wrote in Paris in 1910-13: L'oiseau de feu, Petrushka, and Le sacre du printemps, to give their original titles. With two intermissions, the concert took three hours.
From the opening of The Firebird, this was luminous. The light transparency, translucent colors, and sheer vibrancy of the sound was something awesome, and fit well with an inner-directed, almost Impressionistic interpretation. It all sounded, forgive such an obvious point, very French. No wonder
randy_byers was so entranced by their Daphnis et Chloe a few weeks back. If they can play like this, that must have really been something.The catch is that The Firebird is the last work by the early, Pupil-of-Rimsky-Korsakov version of Stravinsky. Petrushka and The Rite are by a new composer with quite different aesthetic priorities. (The first of at least three points in his career when Stravinsky would entirely re-invent himself.) The quiet, romantic portions, especially of Petrushka, were quite affecting, and the orchestral colors were vivid throughout - I was seated in front, just below the basses, so anything with them was prominent, and one passage of basses and cellos backed up by heavy brass jumped out dramatically. But, though some of the more dramatic portions worked well - the end of Part I of The Rite was especially powerful - the lack of angularity and the somewhat subdued drama wasn't for the best. Still, great playing, and impressive acoustics in the hall, even in the front corner. Worth the trouble, and I'll definitely be back whenever the Symphony and I are both in town.
SFS, meanwhile, is in the middle of a three-week Benjamin Britten festival (his centenary was last November). This week's piece was the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, a song cycle focusing on poems about the night: contemplative and introspective, with a pearly Peter Pears sound from vocalist Toby Spence, and an - as far as I could tell - error-free lyric contribution from principal horn Robert Ward. It was paired with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15, seemingly an odd choice though the two composers were friends and great admirers of each other's music. But, though the symphony is best known for its cryptic "toy shop" opening, the great bulk of the work is actually taken over by slow movements. These, especially the second movement, bore the weight of the work, with MTT placing great emphasis on long reflective solos that really brought out a similarity of air to the Serenade.
Also Copland's Danzon Cubano, which aside from chronology bore no relationship or similarity to anything else on the program.
