If Mahler’s Fifth Symphony wasn’t enough of a reason to hear the SSO and Schwarz play this weekend, now you have a financial reason as well. Ticket prices have been reduced for this weekend’s performances and now start at $9 each — less than the cost of going to the movies.
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.”
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Jean-Christophe Maillot’s “Romeo et Juliette” was a sensation in Seattle when Pacific Northwest Ballet performed it for the first time in January 2008. Choreographed in 1996 for the Ballet de Monte Carlo where he is director, he set Juliette on ballerina Bernice Coppieters, and Coppieters has been here at PNB this fall to stage the repeat of the ballet, which begins next Thursday, September 24.
In 2008, company director Peter Boal chose two dancers for Juliette, Noelani Pantastico and Carla Korbes. Korbes, however, sustained an injury only a couple of weeks before the production began and Pantastico, in a tour de force, danced every performance. Now, Pantastico has herself joined Ballet de Monte Carlo, and principal dancers Korbes and Kaori Nakamura are the two Juliettes.
I talked with Korbes this week about the role, at the end of the first complete run through of the ballet.
It’s a pleasure to hear chamber music at Town Hall. Players and audience being close to one another in a warm acoustical atmosphere makes for a satisfying experience, and of course, that’s how chamber music got its name: music played in a not-so-big room, a chamber, for a selected group of people.
Town Music’s programs for this season follow the mind-working of artistic director Joshua Roman. Now in a solo career, the young ex-principal cellist of Seattle Symphony is still interested in connecting all kinds of music and all kinds of audiences, but the line up of performers is a bit more classical and a bit less eclectic. The five concerts include recorder virtuoso Marion Verbruggen in a trio with Seattle’s Margriet Tindemans and Jillon Stoppels Dupree; Brooklyn Rider, the string quartet which has worked with YoYo Ma on his Silk Road Project; Biava Quartet with Roman joining them; Roman himself with pianist Helen Huang; and Thursday’s performers for Town Music’s opening concert, violinist Jun Iwasaki and pianist Grace Fong.
Iwasaki is now concertmaster of the Oregon Symphony, Fong has won awards at several international piano competitions. Both of them attended the Cleveland Institute of Music with Roman.
The program was well-designed and lively: Mozart’s Violin Sonata in E-flat major, K. 380, followed by Paul Schoenfield’s lively “Four Souvenirs,” Sarasate’s “Zigeunerweisen” and Saint-Saens’ Violin Sonata No.1 in D Minor, the last two works being notoriously difficult to play and full of spectacular fireworks.
It was the sort of program which would have appealed to a young crowd who were maybe not so informed about classical music, but it was mostly older heads in the audience and they enjoyed it just as much.
Schoenfield’s “Souvenirs” was the outstanding performance of the evening. The composer often seems to compose with a bubble of laughter inside him which comes out in the music if the players are inside it too. Iwasaki and Fong had the split-second timing essential to it: the energy, the syncopation, the vitality of the Samba, the smooth, soulful sexiness of the Tango and the nostalgic schmaltz of Tin Pan Alley. Only the Square Dance didn’t quite hit the mark, and that seemed to be due to Schoenfield rather than the performers.
Iwasaki’s technique was more than equal to the “Zigeunerweisen,” but he didn’t catch the sob, the emotion which swirls through this wild gypsy music. Where it should be irresitible, catching up the listener and carrying her with him, it wasn’t.
He has a big sound which can be soft and clear, or rich and full with depth, but too often he marred it by a steely forcing of the tone instead of letting it sing. Often he used more expansive bowing than warranted by the music, sacrificing nuanced phrasing.
The same style marred the Saint-Saens at times also, despite a fine beginning where the urgent feel came through with lovely tone; and a charming lilt to the second movement, light and clean.
Fong is a fine pianist I’d like to hear in solo recital. She was more than equal to all the technical hurdles in this program, playing without stress or banging on the keys, and with clear articulation in the Mozart. However, in the Mozart, she and Iwasaki took a modern approach which negated the elegant restraint of this 1781 work. I would have liked more sensitivity in their interpretations throughout the program.
There were no notes about the works in the program, not even the keys of the Mozart and Saint-Saens sonatas, unfortunate omissions I hope will be rectified next time. A little background often enhances the experience.
Leon Kirchner died today. You can read about Kirchner over at New Music Box. You can also read a very personal blog post by Jeremy Denk about Kirchner, a composer Denk obviously believed in and someone who the pianist considered a friend. Denk posted a follow up to his original post this morning.
Gathering Note 