concert reviews in print
May. 23rd, 2006 02:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacEver since discovering how many jaws I could make drop by casually remarking that the old San Jose Symphony once turned down the opportunity to hire Marin Alsop as its music director (and perhaps a good thing, as she might have gone down with the ship when the orchestra sank ten years later, as the guy they hired instead of her did), I'd had a hankering to write a feature article on music in San Jose for SFCV. And I knew I should do it when, a few months ago, one of the editors casually asked me if this Symphony Silicon Valley outfit was the principal orchestra in those parts. Why, yes it is, and the fact that anybody's uncertain about that is enough to convince me that an orientation article was necessary.
We decided to wait until the SSV season ended earlier this month, and have been bludgeoning my text around ever since. And now it's this week's feature article. Can you find the paragraph that was not written by me at all, but by the principal editor? I knew you could.
Also in this issue - yes, I've been busy - is my review of last week's San Francisco Symphony concert, where the presence of music by both the one-n Schuman (William, 20C American) and the two-n Schumann (Robert, 19C German) put me in mind of Ogden Nash's poem about the one-l lama and the two-l llama, so I quoted it and used it as the organizing principle of the review.
Far more potentially beastly than either Schuman(n) was Edgard Varèse's Ecuatorial. What a strange, but truly interesting, composer: the only one I know whose music is most easily recognized by his use of (if it's present at all) percussion. "Insectoid rhythms" I described it as. Best heard in another work called Ionisation which is for percussion ensemble and nothing else. I'm not even sure I'd describe the resulting sound as music, but it certainly is fascinating to listen to.
We decided to wait until the SSV season ended earlier this month, and have been bludgeoning my text around ever since. And now it's this week's feature article. Can you find the paragraph that was not written by me at all, but by the principal editor? I knew you could.
Also in this issue - yes, I've been busy - is my review of last week's San Francisco Symphony concert, where the presence of music by both the one-n Schuman (William, 20C American) and the two-n Schumann (Robert, 19C German) put me in mind of Ogden Nash's poem about the one-l lama and the two-l llama, so I quoted it and used it as the organizing principle of the review.
Far more potentially beastly than either Schuman(n) was Edgard Varèse's Ecuatorial. What a strange, but truly interesting, composer: the only one I know whose music is most easily recognized by his use of (if it's present at all) percussion. "Insectoid rhythms" I described it as. Best heard in another work called Ionisation which is for percussion ensemble and nothing else. I'm not even sure I'd describe the resulting sound as music, but it certainly is fascinating to listen to.
