I receive a regular stream of emails from arts organizations inquiring about TGN’s calendar and how their concerts can be listed. In an earlier version of this blog, I actually managed a Google calendar that was embedded into the site. I am one person, and keeping track of Seattle events was time consuming. Right about the time I was getting calendar burn out Instant Encore came along.
Instant Encore can be found at http://www.instantencore.com
By: R.M. Campbell
For more than 30 years now, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of “The Nutcracker” is a fixture of the holiday season. Actually, its is in most American cities but few have similar visual charm and panache. And so, PNB opened its 2009 edition of this veritable warhorse over the weekend at McCaw Hall. By the end of the run of more than 40 performances, some 125,000 people will have seen the production. Nothing else in the region comes close to those numbers.
Sometimes people wonder why the company doesn’t just commission new decor and costumes and new choreography. Why should it when the current one sells so many tickets? A new production is always a risk from every standpoint, just as the present “Nutcracker” was in 1983 when it was first produced by a fledging ensemble. PNB is so established now there aren’t so many who remember those nervous days at the beginning when it struggled for everything. This “Nutcacker” was a huge gamble that paid off. They don’t always.
Continue reading Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Nutcracker” Returns to McCaw Hall
It has been a busy fall for live performances and equally busy for new, recommendable album releases. A survey of some of the best, new recordings is overdue. One of the most notable releases, is the San Francisco Symphony’s recording of Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony. It is hard to get this piece to sound right in performance and on disk. So much is happening at all times where do a conductor, sound engineer and musicians begin? MTT seems to have a handle on all of the forces before him, and that allows him to proceed with an idiosyncratic performance, full of energy, which captures the spirit of the performance the recording is taken from. Whether you will enjoy this album depends on how you like your Mahler. If you want a performance which is straight faced and buttoned up then you should steer clear of MTT’s romp. However, if you like your Mahler, unpredictable and inventive then this disk is for you.
By: R.M. Campbell
Lise de la Salle was by most accounts a prodigy. Born in France in 1988, the pianist made her recital debut, so to speak, at 9 in a live broadcast on Radio-France and her concerto debut in Avignon four years later. At 13 she graduated from the Paris Conservatory. She made her American debuts at 16, in New York and Washington, D.C. Now, she has a full-fledged international career.
Her recital at Meany Hall gave ample evidence of her multi-faceted talent. She has huge technical resources, not surprisingly, but that is only the beginning, unlike so many other virtuosi of her age. She has refinement, individuality, musicality. Pretty remarkable for someone 21 years old.
It won’t be very long before concert stages will be filled with music customarily associated with the holidays. Last year, I asked who had the best holiday concert. The winner was Seattle Pro Musica.
For better or worse, Handel’s Messiah is standard holiday music. I want to know, who has the best Messiah? Are the SSO’s modern instruments, size, and chorus preferable to Seattle Baroque’s historically informed style? What about Orchestra Seattle’s hybrid approach? Is the Bellevue Phil the cream of the crop or do the PNB musicians that make up the Auburn Symphony do it better?
Tchaikovsky and John Luther Adams don’t appear to have much, if anything in common. More than 100 years separate the two in time. They are separated by continents and countries. Their styles are hugely dissimilar too. Tchaikovsky epitomizes the lushness of the romantic period and Adams pushes the boundaries of music with his experimentations in sound. By accident this weekend, two concerts, one featuring Adams’s percussion piece Mathematics of Resonant Bodies and the other, which ended with Tchaikovsky’s melancholy Sixth Symphony, showed me that there is at least one common feature.
Anne Midgette has it all figured out. Take a gander at how this esteemed member of the classical chattering class perceives the role of the critic.
By: R.M. Campbell
Hearing a new conductor at the Seattle Symphony Orchestra used to be a simple pleasure. Now it has the hint of destiny since everyone may be a candidate to succeed Gerard Schwarz as music director in 2011. The motto at the symphony is that everyone is a candidate, no one is a candidate, which means no one can be ruled out. The symphony is filling every available guest conducting opening with one possibility or another.
Of course, the big opportunities are on the Masterpiece Series, the 22 most prestigious programs of the season. For four concerts starting Thursday at Benaroya Hall, Norwegian conductor Arild Remmereit made his local debut. He has conducted about eight American orchestras, including Atlanta and Baltimore, second tier orchestras in Germany and Austria and most of the major ensembles in Scandinavia. Remmereit studied in Olso, Stockholm and Vienna, where he now lives. He is in his early 40s.
Continue reading Norwegian conductor returns to SSO podium this week
The Seattle Symphony is performing Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony this weekend with guest conductor Arild Remmereit. Remmereit and I had a good conversation about Tchaikovsky and Mozart a week ago Friday. The musicians I spoke with are excited to work with him again, remembering his successful concert with the orchestra three years ago. Be sure to watch the video I made with Remmereit to get the true measure of this conductor’s ideas on Mozart and Tchaikovsky. On Saturday, Avant Garde composer John Luther Adams will be at the Chapel performance space in Wallingford. Pianist Christina Valdes and percusionist Steve Schick will be playing a selection of pieces for piano and percussion. Adams’s music is a cross between the meditative sounds of Morton Feldman and the crashing, upheavals often found in Iannis Xenakis’s works. If new music isn’t to your liking, the Early Music Guild presents Musica ad Rhenum with Baroque flutist Jed Wentz on Saturday. Also on Saturday, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra presents its very first complete program which showcases Andrew Sumitani playing Bruch’s First Violin Concerto, Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 (London), and Mozart’s Symphony No. 38 (Prague). Finally, on Tuesday Lise de la Salle returns to Meany Hall for a program of Beethoven and Prokofiev.
Two concerts this past weekend exemplified Seattle’s diverse classical music scene. Saturday night, acclaimed, local flutist Paul Taub celebrated thirty years in Seattle with an anniversary concert at the Cornish College of the Arts. The next day, the musicians of Philharmonia Northwest, one of the regions many talented community and semi-professional orchestras, tuned their instruments and played their second concert of the 2009/2010 season. The concert featured Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony and Beethoven’s daunting Emperor Concerto for piano with Robert Silverman at the keyboard.
Only a few years ago, a weekend including these two concerts and performances by the Seattle Symphony playing downtown would have been considered busy. Today, a Paul Taub recital and a Philharmonia Northwest concert compete with numerous other classical music organizations. On this particular weekend, my interests were divided among at least six different performances. Since I only have one set of ears, I had to choose.
Gathering Note 