By Philippa Kiraly
I love hearing the Auburn Symphony Orchestra. Let me count the ways (not counting the time it does to get there from Seattle): No cost and no problems parking. An acoustically good auditorium, large enough to host a symphony orchestra but small enough for the audience to feel close up and intimate with it. Top ticket price $25. And an orchestra that is worth the trouble to get there.
Continue reading Auburn Symphony dazzles in all Franck concert
By R.M. Campbell
The Russian National Orchestra spends a good share of its collective life on the road. Since its founding, in 1990, the ensemble has spurned government funding, perhaps unique in all of Europe, in favor of American style private funding. Inevitably it has an international board that insist on an international profile.
It is not a stranger to Seattle. One of the great virtues of Benaroya Hall has been that there is now time and space for orchestras other than the Seattle Symphony. They are a principal highlight of the SSO season, some orchestras greater than others admittedly, but none is shabby. The Russian National Orchestra is among the best. Led by its founding music director, the pianist Mikhail Pletnev, the ensemble did a mostly Russian program Wednesday night: Tchaikovsky’s “Elegy” and Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony. The concerto du jour belonged to Dvorak which seems almost Russian because of its long identification with the late Mikhail Rostropovich. The cellist at Benaroya was Russian — a young virtuoso of great talent, Sergey Antonov.
Continue reading Russian National Orchestra plays glorious concert Wednesday
By Philippa Kiraly
One of its biggest audiences ever filled the little Chapel at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford Monday night, for the last of Simple Measure’s Fire-themed concerts. (We had Earth earlier this season, the Air group take place in April, the Water ones in May.)
It’s possible part of the draw was the return visit to Seattle of Alex Klein, the brilliant Brazilian oboist who taught at UW in the 1990s, then became principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony until he contracted focal dystonia, a neurological condition which caused weakness and unreliability in two of his fingers.
Continue reading A Simple Measure of good music can be satisying…
By R.M. Campbell
The Puget Sound region has an abundance of choral groups, from very small ensembles to large masses of singers. While they vary in quality, most are more than respectable and some first-class. They cover the repertory in astonishing breadth and depth.
Continue reading Cappella Romana devotes an evening to Serbian Orthodox music
Sony’s new release of Mendelssohn’s piano trios is the first time the trio of Yo Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, and Itzhak Perlman have recorded together. Courtesy of Sony, TGN is able to give away a brand new copy of this CD to one of its readers.
There are two ways you can win this new CD.
Continue reading Win the new Mendelssohn CD from Ma, Ax, and Perlman
It isn’t surprising Erwin Stein picked Mahler’s Fourth Symphony to reduce for chamber ensemble for performance in Schoenberg’s Society of Private Musical Performance. The symphony is Mahler’s smallest in scope even if the impetus is other-worldly. As with all of Mahler’s symphonies, the composer sought to encompass themes larger than himself even if they are somewhat obscured. On the one hand, there are moments of childlike innocence suggesting naive love. This is the approach embraced by the Northwest Sinfonietta’s music director Christoph Chagnard. An alternative view, is that the symphony reveals the infinite pleasures of heaven, exemplified by the fourth movement — a setting of “the Heavenly Life” for soprano from the Youth’s Magic Horn.
Continue reading Chamber sized Mahler is part of “Romancing the Muse”
R.M. Campbell
There weren’t many people at Bernaroya Hall Thursday night (alas): The music deserved better.
The two highlights were Stefan Jackiw in Barber’s Violin Concerto and Arnold Schoenberg’s orchestral transcription of Brahms’ G Minor Piano Quartet.
Continue reading Barber and Brahms are the program this weekend at Benaroya
By R. M. Campbell
Garrick Ohlsson’s first of two concerts devoted solely to Chopin — to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth and Olhsson’s 40th anniversary of winning the prestigious Chopin competition in Warsaw — was a brilliant affair, what one has come to expect from this pianist in his long and distinguished career. His second concert Tuesday night at Meany Hall was even more remarkable.
Continue reading Ohlsson plays the second of his two all-Chopin concerts
By Peter A. Klein
Everyone in Seattle who loves classical music must have breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Seattle Symphony musicians and management announced they had come to a tentative contract agreement. I know I did.
During the troubled negotiations, I was reminded of an old science fiction story called “The Tunesmith,” by the late Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Science fiction is often a good predictor of what is to come, and this particular story serves as a cautionary tale for classical music.
Busoni, Schumann and Strauss was the line-up of composers on this week’s SSO subscription concert. Ferruccio Busoni’s Turandot Suite opened the program followed by Richard Strauss’ youthful Violin Concerto. James Ehnes was the guest soloist. The night closed with Robert Schumann’s 3rd Symphony “Rhenish.” For most of the audience, the pieces chosen — with the exception of Schumann’s symphony — were probably unfamiliar. While unfamiliarity can yield surprises and new discoveries, this wasn’t the case with the recent batch of SSO concerts.
Gathering Note 