Month: September 2009

Zach Carstensen named NEA arts journalism fellow

Congratulations are in order for Zach Carstensen, freelance writer and TGN man about town, because he received an NEA fellowship to the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera. Is that a long-winded title or what! Anyway, this is a terrific program that promotes journalism in the arts, and ZC is doing a great job. He will be in the Big Apple from October 17 through the 27th.

Carstensen is on the official NEA list here and here.

Highlights of this year’s Institute performance program include:

• Bernard Haitink conducts Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Symphony No. 9 at Lincoln
Center’s Avery Fisher Hall.
• Renee Fleming performs in Der Rosenkavalier at the Metropolitan Opera.
• Murray Perahia solo piano recital at Carnegie Hall
• West Side Story on Broadway
• Clarinetist David Krakauer chamber music recital at Alice Tully Hall
• Wu Man, Pipa virtuoso, at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall

Congrats Zach!

Interview with Haochen Zhang, Van Cliburn Gold Medalist

Photo: Stephen Eastwood/Lynx
Photo: Stephen Eastwood/Lynx

Portland Piano International will feature Haochen Zhang in its first recital for this season on Sunday (October 4) at the Newmark Theatre.

In June, I heard Zhang at the Van Cliburn competition, and he shared top honors with Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii. Zhang, age 19, moved to Philadelphia from Shanghai, China five years ago in order to study at the Curtis Institute of Music. He has also won the 2007 China International Piano Competition and has performed with the China National Symphony Orchestra, the Shanghai and Shenzhen Symphony Orchestras, the Krakow State Philharmonic, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Continue reading Interview with Haochen Zhang, Van Cliburn Gold Medalist

Oregon Symphony collaborates with Thile, Meyer, Fleck, and Hussain in outstanding concert

meyer hussain fleck

A near-capacity audience at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall reveled in an unusual gala concert with the Oregon Symphony and virtuosi of the banjo, mandolin, tabla, and double bass on Saturday evening (September 26). The orchestra welcomed Bela Fleck, Chris Thile, Zakir Hussain, and Edgar Meyer and whipped up some very new music by these guest artists. It seemed to be a gamble to center a gala on Fleck, Hussain, and Meyer’s Triple Concerto and Thile’s Mandolin Concerto (a piece that was co-commissioned by the orchestra along with other ensembles), but the audience loved every minute of the music-making. Continue reading Oregon Symphony collaborates with Thile, Meyer, Fleck, and Hussain in outstanding concert

Mahler’s emancipation: Symphony No. 5

For those of you interested in seeing the Seattle Symphony this season, this weekend would be a great time to see them. The program for this Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday (October 1-4) is Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, with guest soloist Isabelle Faust, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor. I have a special affinity for Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. It was the symphonic work that inspired me to pursue an orchestral music career.

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony was a revolutionary work and represents a new compositional period in his music. After composing three symphonies with vocalists and words (Symphonies 2, 3 and 4), Mahler writes a purely instrumental symphony. Richard Strauss, a fellow composer and contemporary of Mahler’s, wrote, “[Mahler’s] emancipation from the literary clearly awakened in him higher demands on orchestration in the service of expression and clarity.”

Continue reading Mahler’s emancipation: Symphony No. 5

Quarter notes: upcoming

Tomorrow night, Anton Batagov emerges for his Seattle debut and first public recital in 12 years at the Good Shepherd Center in the Wallingford neighborhood. The Russian composer/pianist is famous in his country for his movie scores for television and movies. His recital will include music from some of his television and movie scores.

Also this week, the Seattle Symphony tackles what is perhaps Gustav Mahler’s most famous symphony – the Fifth. Noted classical music writer Bernard Jacobsen remarked that Gerard Schwarz, the Seattle Symphony’s music director, is “one of the finest exponents of Mahler symphonies in the world today.” For me, Schwarz’s Mahler is always enjoyable – recent performances of the Eighth, Third and Sixth come to mind – even if his interpretations don’t rise to the “best in the world,” as Jacobsen argues. Violinist Isabelle Faust is joining the orchestra in the first half for Mendelssohn’s First Violin Concerto.

This Sunday, Orchestra Seattle and the Seattle Chamber Singers kick off their season with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As always, Orchestra Seattle’s season looks good. There are the customary and noteworthy Bach and Mozart concerts as well as the annual Messiah performance. But, there are also performances of Handel’s “Alexander’s Feast,” Saint Saens’s “Christmas Oratorio,” and Michael Torke’s Saxaphone Concerto.

Portland Opera dishes up wonderful La Bohème

Boheme_1

A terrific set of young singers energized Portland Opera’s production of Puccini’s “La Bohème,” which opened on Friday night at Keller Auditorium. The opera, which tells the lives of four poverty-stricken ex-students and their friends in Paris around 1830, received exceptional performances by the principals, with Kelly Kaduce leading the way. Continue reading Portland Opera dishes up wonderful La Bohème

An unusual, remarkable “Romeo et Juliette”

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Batkhurel Bold (as Tybalt) and Jonathan Porretta (as Mercutio) in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Roméo et Juliette. Photo: Angela Sterling
Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Batkhurel Bold (as Tybalt) and Jonathan Porretta (as Mercutio) in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Roméo et Juliette. Photo: Angela Sterling

Drop your preconceptions of a story length ballet: a classical spectacular with splendid costumes? A stultified, stylized waste of time?

Go to see the current Pacific Northwest Ballet production of “Romeo et Juliette” with choreography by Jean-Christophe Maillot. It will confound you, absorb you, shake you, upset those preconceptions and leave you feeling wrung but satisfied.

Continue reading An unusual, remarkable “Romeo et Juliette”

Review: Shaham and Parker play Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos

Earlier this week I was standing in line at a bookstore with my iPod turned on and my ear buds tucked into my ears. I was listening to Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos; pre-listening for last night’s Seattle Symphony performance with guest pianists Orli Shaham and Jon Kimura Parker. When it was my turn at the cash register, the cashier asked a simple enough question.

“What are you listening to?” he asked.

“Mozart,” I replied.

“Ahhh, Mozart, that’s what I always turn to when I need to relax after a stressful day.”

This cashier, as genuine as his question and comment were, probably has never heard Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat major. If he had, I am sure he would have a different opinion of the composer.

Continue reading Review: Shaham and Parker play Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos

Orli Shaham and Jon Kimura Parker share their thoughts on Mozart’s Two Piano Concerto

Tonight the Seattle Symphony begins their subscription season with the piano pyrotechnics of Orli Shaham and Jon Kimura Parker. Parker and Shaham are accomplished pianists in their own right, but the Seattle Symphony has both of them this week as they play Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat major. It is the first time the two have played together in the same concert, but you wouldn’t know it by watching the two talk.  If their easy demeanor and rapport carry over into tonight’s performance the audience should be in for a treat.