By R.M. Campbell
Until pianist Ingrid Fliter was awarded the Gilmore Artist Award four years ago, she was little known beyond the borders of her native Argentina. That coveted prize gave her international press she could not buy and launched her career. Prestigious dates at prestigious halls and with prestigious conductors followed quickly. So did a recording contract with EMI.
Continue reading Ingrid Fliter Makes Her Seattle Debut Thursday night at Benaroya Hall
By R.M. Campbell
The group, with violinists Sebastian Gurtler and Regis Bringolf, violist Gertrud Weinmeister and cellist Florian Berne, offered lean and tangy accounts of Haydn, Janacek and Brahms. Haydn’s String Quartet in G Minor, the third of three quartets of the Opus 20, was the least successful. Isn’t that often the case with string quartets today? It was anxious, with inconsistent ensemble and lack of organic growth. It appeared the quartet hadn’t made up its collective mind about how to approach the work. The very free-flowing ease with which Haydn is often associated was not entirely absent but often so.
Janacek’s Second Quartet (“Intimate Letters’) was a different kettle of fish. Here the quartet seemed on home turf, although why Haydn would not be home turf for a Austrian quartet seems difficult to understand. Maybe chronology is more important than geography. In any event, the performance was compelling, at once anguished, disconcerting, uneasy. Janacek is better known for his operas and orchestral works, but this quartet is worthy of attention. The Wolf Quartet must have an affinity for its character, because it was so deeply in it. All of its varied emotions, and the range is quite wide, were given acute expressions. With the Wolf, one heard some of the same potency one hears in his operas.
The conclusion was the last quartet Brahms wrote, in B-flat Major. One could have assumed the lean approach heard in the Haydn and Janaceck would have been cast aside. That was not the case. The Wolf was precisely the same, although certainly there were stylistic differences. This is not a complaint. One hears Brahms played so often with the heart on the sleeve that to hear something less openly expressive is welcome. Gurtler has a finely wrought tone that gives the quartet its essential tonal attributes. This was counterbalanced, somewhat in the Brahms by Weinmeister’s rich viola sound. Brahms was very generous to the viola, and Weinmeister took every advantage, lending a rich, handsome sound to what Brahms provided. Moreover, there was energy and variety to the playing. This was not everyday Brahms.
Update:
As you can tell by the comments, the opinion on this matter is not in my favor. From the supposed “logistical nightmare” the SSO would face if they had to process another 84 donations to claims of equivalence because the donation is coming from union funds. To emails suggesting that I don’t support the musicians, don’t love classical music and I am single handedly jeopardizing the fund’s success because I dared to point out inconsistencies. My opinion is not popular.
Let’s be clear. I still love the SSO. I still think the SSOPO musicians are fine people and fine artists who deserve to be compensated better than they are. And, I think the donation by the SSOPO is significant, laudable, and will raise significant money for the orchestra. It will be the catalyst for hiring a new executive director and music director. Oh, and to clear up another mis-perception. I am not frothing with anger over this. People who know me, know that I don’t really get angry.
Some of the exchanges over the weekend have reminded me of the arguments between Democrats and Republicans at the height of the Iraq War. You might remember at one point it was deemed unpatriotic to challenge the validity and the prosecution of the war. If leaders pointed out inconsistencies and challenged conventional wisdom they didn’t love America. So it goes in the world of classical music too, I guess.
Just to make sure I didn’t misunderstand how the musician’s contribution to the annual fund was described I went back and pulled up Janet Tu’s and David Brewster’s pieces on the contract resolution.
Brewster writes:
Two developments helped resolve the impasse. One was the suggestion, coming from the musicians, that they each chip in $2,010 to the current Annual Fund campaign of the Symphony — in effect a tax-deductible pay cut to go on top of the 5 percent cut for the remainder of this season.
Tu writes:
In addition, each of the 84 members of the musicians union will contribute $2,010 — for a total of $168,840 — to the Symphony’s Annual Fund.
I called a member of the negotiating team yesterday to set the record straight on why the fund wasn’t seeded the way our paper of record, David Brewster, and myself were told. Either we got it all wrong or the SSOPO came up with a different way to contribute to the fund. The person didn’t pick up the phone or return my call. Moreover, after I dashed off the original post I wasn’t expecting to write anything else on the matter. But, my mind has been churning ever since that I have a few more posts up my sleeve and a phone call to make to the SSO Annual Fund.
My opinion isn’t going to change on this matter. I don’t like how the fund was actually set up compared to how it was described. But, if I have written anything factually inaccurate, I will fix the record. And, if anyone from the SSOPO would like to pen a response with a byline, I will run it.
The original post follows the jump.
Seattle has struggled to create an identity as a major, American city for as long as I have lived here. Each time, it seemed poised to break out, the provincial mindset, which has long dominated the city’s culture, reasserted itself. For 72 hours last weekend, Seattle’s music and performance finally broke loose, bringning us Heiner Goebbels’ “Songs of Wars I’ve Seen,” a music and theater piece based on Getrude Stein’s writings.
Seattle Opera’s 2009/2010 season began with the spectacle of Wagner’s Ring and will end with the uncertainty of a new opera – Daron Hagen’s Amelia – the first commission for the company in decades. In between, a series of three Verdi operas have provided reliable entertainment and an overview of Verdi’s output. The Verdi festival comes to an end this month with a production of Verdi’s last opera – Falstaff.
Continue reading Falstaff closes out Seattle Opera’s Verdi survey
By R.M. Campbell
The last time Jean-Yves Thibaudet played in Seattle was as soprano Renee Fleming’s pianist. He was a genuine partner to her and she, in addition, gave him some solo time. a rare gesture from a singer. Still, he was second banana. On Sunday afternoon, also at Benaroya Hall, part of the Seattle Symphony’s Distinguished Artists Series, he was first banana and what a banana.
It is something of a commonplace to say the French pianist is a musician of great accomplishment. But after Sunday’s performance, it seems like an understatement. He has always been a pianist of elegance and authority and subtlety. More so on Sunday, with technical brilliance and probing musicianship.
By R.M. Campbell
Few would argue that Zakir Hussain is one of the most important drummers of the late 20th and early 21st century. A steady presence in the United States since the 1970’s, he has often, well, maybe not often, appeared in Seattle in various venues with various other Indian musicians. On Thursday he returned to Seattle for a concert titled “Masters of Percussion,” presented by the Seattle Theatre Group at the Moore Theatre.
It was a program of his own creation in which he invited leading drummers, as well as the eminent violinists Ganesh & Kumaresh, for a tour of North America. Seattle was the first stop. The house was near capacity and enthusiastic for this show with its multiplicity of talent and offerings.
Continue reading Hussain and fellow drummers appear at the Moore
The contest for the free Yo Yo Ma Mendelssohn CD ended on Monday. I received a slew of entries, but the winner — drawn at random from everyone who sent me an email or joined our Facebook page — is Walter Campbell. Campbell is a self professed “budding classical music enthusiast” who also enjoys Irish traditional music. Congratulations Walter.
In case you are wondering, here are the correct answers needed to be entered in the drawing.
1. What Orchestra was Yo-Yo Ma appointed Creative Consultant to at the end of last year?
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
2. What College / University is Emanuel Ax currently a teacher at?
Julliard School
3. What President Awarded the “National Medal of Arts” award to Itzhak Perlman?
Bill Clinton
By R.M. Campbell
Since its founding in 1924, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia has become one of the most important music conservatories in the United States. Its list of alumni, as well as faculty, represent some of the most celebrated names in music. They are everywhere, including a number in the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, like principal violist Susan Gulkis. However, the school is not as well-known to the general public as the Juilliard School in New York. Curtis on Tour, hopes to correct that and give its young, talented students an early crack on the professional stage. It made its Seattle debut last year at the Henry Chapel in the Highlands. It returned Tuesday night, with different students accompanied by two eminent faculty members — violinist Ida Kavafian and cellist Peter Wiley — and its eminent president Roberto Diaz, who was principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra until his appointment to Curtis. Kavafian and Wiley played. Diaz did not, a pity, because he is such a fine musician (he played at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival the year of his appointment), although his student, Hyo Bi Sim, did, and acquitted herself with honor.
By Lorin Wilkerson
On Wednesday night at the Clinton Street Theater in SE Portland, Opera Theater Oregon debuted what must surely be the world premier of any Wagner opera to be set as an episode of the once-popular, vapid TV series Baywatch. Das Rheingold may not seem at first like a suitable thematic partner for a show whose main claim to fame was a horde of buxom young women and bronzed, muscled men running around the beach (often in slow motion) rescuing people, preventing crime, and solving mysteries, but glimpse underneath the surface dissimilarities and a surprising mesh occurs.
Gathering Note 
