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calimacAn e-mail note from my editor yesterday morning said that SFCV is short-staffed this week, so could we all please get our reviews in early, by noon? (Usually I have till late afternoon for a concert the previous day.) So I finished this off in 90 minutes; looks OK.
I'm not sure I conveyed just how funny conductor Pletnev's hurry-up finish to the Tchaikovsky Suite was. The composer wrote an ending intended to be just slightly grand and pompous; the conductor wanted to burn the excitement. "Every time the composer tries to slow down for a more grandiose statement of the theme, Pletnev just goes faster still," I wrote. It was a bit as if Tchaikovsky kept downshifting the car, to which Pletnev would respond by stomping on the gas pedal twice as hard. There'd be a momentary loss of momentum, a grinding of gears, and then the music-car would shoot forward faster than before.
I did put in a slight dig at the orchestra for relying purely on lush old-time composers in the year of Shostakovich's centennial - and right between two weeks of Rostropovich conducting two weeks of all-Shostakovich concerts with the home orchestra (maybe they thought we needed a break), but I didn't make the mistake that Janos Gereben had made when writing up the concert announcement. He'd said the repertoire "remains firmly rooted in the 19th century," without even the Stravinsky the RNO is playing on some other concerts on the tour.
I hate to have to mention this, but the two Rachmaninoff pieces were written in 1912 and 1909. That makes them 20th-century works. Now there are those who will say that Rachmaninoff is "not a composer of his time" (and if you don't believe me, check out the incredibly condescending article on Rakhmaninov - they wouldn't even allow him his preferred Latin-alphabet spelling - in the 1950s Fifth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music). But it seems to me unbearably arrogant to say that this music written in the 20th century is music of the 20th century, and that music written in the 20th century somehow doesn't qualify. Who passed the law defining it? If it's written in the 20th century, it's part of the spectrum that makes up music of that century, and you'll just have to deal with it.
Me, I got around this problem by labeling Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff both "Czarist-era" composers, and as the Czarist era ended in 1917, I'm safe.
This was the first concert I've reviewed for SFCV at Davies, and since reviewers don't get to pick their own seats, I was down on the main floor which I don't much like. The sound's better than it was the last time I sat there, before the acoustic remodeling, but while it's immediate you can't see anything going on in back, and your ability to hear it is also sometimes questionable. Davies has raised side boxes, some surprisingly cheap, that nearly overlook the stage, where both the view and the sound are fantastic.
However, being on the ground meant that for once I could walk up and see close-up my favorite intermission event, the lowering of the piano. When there's a piano concerto in the first half, the instrument is removed during intermission not by being trundled to the sidelines, for which there's no room, but by elevator. A stagehand comes out with a device that looks like a big metal powerstrip, but with colored-light buttons instead of outlets. He opens a tiny panel in the stage's wooden floor, pulls out a thick cable, attaches it to his device, presses a button, and a large section of the stage slowly detaches and begins to sink. When it gets down about 8 feet, it stops level with a basement, the stagehand and a colleague roll the piano off, and then raises the lift back up level with the stage, unhooks his device, closes the tiny trap, moves the violins' music stands into the vacated space, and presto: piano vanished as if it had never been. Always fun to watch, from above or eye-level.
I'm not sure I conveyed just how funny conductor Pletnev's hurry-up finish to the Tchaikovsky Suite was. The composer wrote an ending intended to be just slightly grand and pompous; the conductor wanted to burn the excitement. "Every time the composer tries to slow down for a more grandiose statement of the theme, Pletnev just goes faster still," I wrote. It was a bit as if Tchaikovsky kept downshifting the car, to which Pletnev would respond by stomping on the gas pedal twice as hard. There'd be a momentary loss of momentum, a grinding of gears, and then the music-car would shoot forward faster than before.
I did put in a slight dig at the orchestra for relying purely on lush old-time composers in the year of Shostakovich's centennial - and right between two weeks of Rostropovich conducting two weeks of all-Shostakovich concerts with the home orchestra (maybe they thought we needed a break), but I didn't make the mistake that Janos Gereben had made when writing up the concert announcement. He'd said the repertoire "remains firmly rooted in the 19th century," without even the Stravinsky the RNO is playing on some other concerts on the tour.
I hate to have to mention this, but the two Rachmaninoff pieces were written in 1912 and 1909. That makes them 20th-century works. Now there are those who will say that Rachmaninoff is "not a composer of his time" (and if you don't believe me, check out the incredibly condescending article on Rakhmaninov - they wouldn't even allow him his preferred Latin-alphabet spelling - in the 1950s Fifth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music). But it seems to me unbearably arrogant to say that this music written in the 20th century is music of the 20th century, and that music written in the 20th century somehow doesn't qualify. Who passed the law defining it? If it's written in the 20th century, it's part of the spectrum that makes up music of that century, and you'll just have to deal with it.
Me, I got around this problem by labeling Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff both "Czarist-era" composers, and as the Czarist era ended in 1917, I'm safe.
This was the first concert I've reviewed for SFCV at Davies, and since reviewers don't get to pick their own seats, I was down on the main floor which I don't much like. The sound's better than it was the last time I sat there, before the acoustic remodeling, but while it's immediate you can't see anything going on in back, and your ability to hear it is also sometimes questionable. Davies has raised side boxes, some surprisingly cheap, that nearly overlook the stage, where both the view and the sound are fantastic.
However, being on the ground meant that for once I could walk up and see close-up my favorite intermission event, the lowering of the piano. When there's a piano concerto in the first half, the instrument is removed during intermission not by being trundled to the sidelines, for which there's no room, but by elevator. A stagehand comes out with a device that looks like a big metal powerstrip, but with colored-light buttons instead of outlets. He opens a tiny panel in the stage's wooden floor, pulls out a thick cable, attaches it to his device, presses a button, and a large section of the stage slowly detaches and begins to sink. When it gets down about 8 feet, it stops level with a basement, the stagehand and a colleague roll the piano off, and then raises the lift back up level with the stage, unhooks his device, closes the tiny trap, moves the violins' music stands into the vacated space, and presto: piano vanished as if it had never been. Always fun to watch, from above or eye-level.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 02:18 am (UTC)And on the evening of April 9th, the Seattle Chamber Players are performing Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15, another piece that I have never heard performed live.
I hadn't been planning on attending Norwescon anyway...
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 04:42 am (UTC)Just as I'm getting two of Shostakovich's symphonies (5 and 13) in two weeks, so are you. 15 is a tricky one - performances vary greatly. The BBC Music disk of it that came recently is outstanding, but an SF Symphony performance several years ago was empty. Good luck with the Chamber Players.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 04:53 am (UTC)For now, at least until you attend a performance of Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini" (1934).
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 05:31 am (UTC)I vaguely thought about mentioning that the Rhapsody would go well with the Tchaikovsky Suite, as they both quote the Dies irae, but that would've been a bit much.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 10:40 am (UTC)