Month: June 2009

Harold Gray, now in his 31st year as artistic director of the Portland Piano International, is getting geared up for the 2009 Portland International Piano Festival. Running from July 12th through the 19th at the World Forestry Center, the festival is jam packed with an intriguing slate of artists, teachers, and films.

I chatted with Gray at Café Umbria in the Pearl District where he gave me the lowdown on the festival. Continue reading Harold Gray talks about the 2009 Portland International Piano Festival

I came to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall with great anticipation on Saturday evening (June 27), because Helmuth Rilling and the Oregon Bach Festival choir and orchestra were in town to perform Haydn’s “Creation.” I had sung this piece under Rilling at least ten years ago (more about that later), so I willingly took a seat in the balcony where this hall’s acoustics are best.

Rilling knows this music forward and backwards, and he conducted the entire piece from memory, but this performance needed more spark and much more volume from the chorus. The lack of vocal heft from the chorus became evident right away when the choir sang “Und es ward Licht” (“And there was light”). The orchestra easily overpowered the singers so much that the word “Licht” was completely obliterated – even the final “t” couldn’t be detected. Later in the first part of the piece, the orchestra overwhelmed the chorus again. Fortunately, the balance between the orchestra and the choir was a lot better in the second and third parts of the piece, but the chorus still needed to project a lot more. Continue reading Oregon Bach Festival’s “Creation” in need of more spark

Haydn and Mendelssohn have been dead for a very long time, but their presence is felt every time their music is played by virtuosic musicians like the ones who took the stage on Tuesday  (June 23) at Chamber Music Northwest’s opening concert series. I attended the concert at Catlin Gabel School and found the each  performance inspiring, because the performers got inside the music. Continue reading Chamber Music Northwest opens with robust Haydn and Mendelssohn

Music critic David Stabler of The Oregonian has a full report on the financial problems at the Oregon Symphony online here. It’s a tough time for arts organizations everywhere, and the orchestra’s president Elaine Calder says that she will scrutinize every nook and cranny in its budget and operations. Calder was in Chicago a week ago for the 64th National Conference of the League of American Orchestra, and I’m sure that fund raising and budgets were among the issues most discussed.

Chicago is where Oregon Symphony conductor Carlos Kalmar is leading the Grant Park Orchestra. Here’s a very positive review of Kalmar and the orchestra in the Chicago Tribune. I don’t know how long the link will be available, so I’ll excerpt a quote from the article by the Tribune’s classical music critic, John von Rhein:

Just as the festival is observing a major milestone, so is Carlos Kalmar, who’s celebrating his 10th season as music director. The orchestra is playing better than ever under his vigorous leadership, a fact that was evident in the two Russian war horses that made up the program, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” heard in the Ravel orchestration.

Here’s a link to a positive review in the Chicago Classical Review of another Kalmar-led concert at Grant Park.

All in all, the Oregon Symphony is not the only orchestra that has made great strides under Kalmar.

Chamber Music Northwest opens its 39th summer season next week, offering five weeks (June 22 – July 26) of great music with top tier musicians from all over the nation. This summer’s programming celebrates the 200th anniversaries of Felix Mendelssohn (who was born in 1809) and Joseph Haydn (who died in 1809), and the music of many other greats in the classical field will be performed as well: Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Bach, Schumann, Vivaldi, and Tchaikovsky. Several concerts will blend pieces from Telemann, Marcello, Schoenberg, Bartok, Bloch, Korngold, Kernis, Adams, Schubert, and others to keep your ears tuned up. Also consider the following: Continue reading Chamber Music Northwest blasts off next week