Who are You Going to See?

[Always.Learning]

Last night:  Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall (Mozart Concerto for Two Pianos, Marc-Andre Hamelin & Ryan Wigglesworth; Wigglesworth Piano Concerto (US Premiere); Haydn Symphony No. 103 ("Drumroll")

 

March 20:  Beethoven & Shostakovich, Seattle Symphony Chamber Music Series

 

March 28:  Zakir Hussain, Kala Ramnath, Jayanthi Kumaresh; Moore Theater (Seattle)

 

April 1:  Cecile McLorin Salvant, Jazz Alley (Seattle)

 

April 3:  Steven Osborne, Benaroya Hall

[Always.Learning]

12 hours ago, Johnseye said:

I just got back from Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-yo Ma at the CSO.  Beethoven trios.  Those guys were having a great time and the music was alive and upbeat.  It's always great hearing music played with enthusiasm and energy.  Yuja was like that as well.  She took various compositions and blended them together.  Extremely impressive, energetic, talented and easy on the eyes.

Kavakos is probably the least known of the trio you saw, but he is a truly amazing violinist, having seen him twice in recital in Seattle. And Wang is always fun -- between her musicality, technique, and stage presence.

[Always.Learning]

My first post in this thread. I already sent the following in an email to friends and it was easy enough to copy and paste here so why not:

 

We are spending five days in NYC visiting our son, who is in grad school here, and partaking of the city. It’s an extended Indian summer here with temps ranging from the mid-60s to mid-70s. Spent yesterday morning at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Great time of year to go:  not too busy and gorgeous fall colors. 

We eventually made our way to Manhattan yesterday, where our first stop was Julliard, the famed music/dance/drama school. Every year the school has a piano concerto competition that any piano student can enter. Three finalists each played the full Brahms first concerto with partner pianists playing an “orchestral reduction” (i.e., the orchestra part of the concerto transcribed for piano). The finals were open to the public (free) and took place in Paul Recital hall, a 275 seat space that is optimized for recitals and chamber music. The sound was excellent. 

All three finalists were Asian or of Asian descent. We watched the first finalist and were completely gobsmacked at this young woman’s poise, technique, musicality, and presence.  We grabbed dinner afterwards and couldn’t stop talking about how insanely great she was. It turns out that she won the competition and will perform with the Julliard orchestra in about a month. 

Next stop:  Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center for a NY Phil performance. From the perspective of welcoming ticket holders (or just the general public) and inviting you into a relaxing atmosphere where it is just fun to hang out on comfortable furniture, grab some food or a glass of wine, and socialize before the concert, Geffen’s makeover is a total success. 

The first half of the concert featured Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 with Yefim Bronfman and Jaap van Zweden leading the orchestra. The performance was pretty straightforward, beautiful in a surface kind of way but, to my mind, not plumbing too many depths. After the orchestra tuned up before the first note, I turned to my wife and said it sounds better already (than the old Avery Fisher Hall). And indeed it does. With this Mozart, what really stood out was the overall clarity of the sound, especially the winds. The sound is warm, natural, clear, and balanced. The whole experience is way more intimate, psychologically and musically, than the old cavernous hall where great distances seemed to separate you from the stage (like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, as Bernstein once said).  

The second half of the program featured Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. This is a big Romantic symphony that will test any orchestra and conductor. I’m still acquiring a taste for Bruckner but this concert went a long way towards convincing me that he wrote some masterpieces. Before departing for NYC, I listened to four or five different performances of this work, and that definitely helped (I particularly liked Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden). But a live performance of something with this scale is just a completely different experience. 

Van Zweden was in full command of this virtuoso orchestra and they gave a dynamic, powerful, passionate account of the music. The sound was very good. If I had any complaints, I would ask for a little more resonance and air when the whole orchestra is performing, and I would like the strings, especially cellos and violas, to be more audible when they are called on to sing over the rest of the orchestra. 

The hall really captures wind sound beautifully, especially in the softest passages, where the clarity and timbre of the instruments was breathtaking. And when the orchestra was in full cry, the sound could be almost unbelievably loud, and thrillingly so. As a former horn player, I thrilled to the sound of the full brass section, augmented in this symphony by four Wagner tubas. The low brass (trombones and tuba) just kicked butt in this concert. 

Our seats were in the second balcony, on the side, about midway back. Next May we will hear Dudamel conduct the NY Phil in Mahler 9 in this same hall and we will sit behind the orchestra, practically within reading distance of the percussionists’ music. Looking forward to that. 

Tonight, for something completely different, we will see Rhiannon Giddens and some of her banjo-playing friends at Carnegie Hall.