Month: October 2009

A large part of the most beautiful and inspiring choral music ever written in the West is religious. There’s also some poetically banal and musically dreadful stuff in this genre, too.

Fortunately, Choral Arts chose five works from the first category for its concert at St. Mark’s Cathedral Friday night, spanning something over 200 years from Bach to Hugo Distler whose identically titled works, “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, ”bracketed the performance. In the middle came three composers from the romantic era: contemporaries Bruckner, Brahms and Josef Rheinberger.

Unfortunately, from my seat half way down on the right, the Bach suffered mightily from St. Mark’s spotty acoustics, and perhaps from the lack of a shell to focus the sound. Why didn’t Choral Arts use one?

Continue reading Choral Arts at St. Mark’s Cathedral

Thursday night’s Seattle Symphony concert at Benaroya Hall was a study in contrasts: a refined performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and an expansive performance of Mahler’s immense Fifth Symphony. Both were successful, but the truly memorable part was the playing of German violinist Isabelle Faust with her 1704 “Sleeping Beauty” Stradivarius.

The immediate thought when hearing her first notes was how relaxed she was, and how beautiful the pure, gentle sound emanating from her violin. Her bow was so light on the strings it’s as though the sound floated out in an exquisite, silvery stream. Lest this sound sugary sweet, it wasn’t. There was depth and phrasing, shape and contrast here, but always without ostentation. Fast runs seemed easy with plenty of time for each note to be perfect by itself and in its place. There was expressive dynamic range in her playing, but she achieved some extraordinary pianissimos which were nevertheless audible over the orchestra. Faust’s style seemed exactly right for the Mendelssohn. And never have I heard a performance where less was so much more.

Continue reading Superb violinist makes Seattle Symphony debut