concerts review

[calimac]

I got to two concerts yesterday after the memorial service for the rabbi, both of them already on my list.

One was at a middle school up the peninsula: the Redwood Symphony, a local volunteer orchestra with often interesting programming. You don't go to a group like this to hear in-tune playing, but you can be charmed by a fine sense of ensemble. They played Sibelius's Sixth Symphony, a masterpiece you never hear, with plain unpretension and with just the right tone of indeterminate hesitancy that's due to its being neither in major nor in minor but in the Dorian mode. Also his "Andante Festivo" (all andante, no festivo), a short violin concerto by Saint-Saëns ("Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso") and a surprisingly professional but rather plain version of one of Haydn's "Paris" symphonies (no. 86).

The other was a group of assorted French musicians at le petit Trianon. First the Parisii Quartet gave a clear, classically elegant performance of Haydn's "Lark" Quartet; then baritone Jérôme Corréas sang Brahms's Op. 121 accompanied by pianist Philippe Bianconi; then Bianconi joined the quartet for a driving but rather aimless performance of Brahms's Piano Quintet; then all six of them got together for Fauré's song cycle on Verlaine poems, La bonne chanson, which was French coming out its ears. According to the program notes the composer disavowed the arrangement with string quartet, though frankly those parts sounded better than the rather overbearing piano. More the fault of the acoustics than the pianist, surely.

Comments

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Sibelius' "Andante Festivo" also has the distinction of being the only work of his of which there exists a recording conducted by the composer. (Although there was an "imposter" recording for many years; the "real" one only turned up fairly recently.)

I would have loved to have heard that chamber music/mélodies concert.