Category: Seattle

We don’t hear Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” that often, more’s the pity, but listening to Seattle Pro Musica’s performance of it at St. James Friday night, the reason is clear. It’s a great work, but it’s an expansive work which takes a first class choir and two and a half hours. It’s too long for a regular symphony performance, and needs a big chorus, at least a full chamber orchestra, four soloists and several first rate solo choir members. It also needs a dynamic conductor to make the most of Mendelssohn’s dramatic score.

Luckily for us, Seattle Pro Musica fills the bill. Conductor Karen P. Thomas has the kind of sweeping vision to see the work as a whole and that it is, as the Handel oratorios are, an unstaged opera.

Continue reading Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” is high drama

I understand why someone might be afraid to take a chance on the current run of Seattle Symphony concerts. The program is eclectic and unfamiliar. Even if people are put off by the unfamiliar pieces on the program, they certainly would embrace the performances — especially the solo performances in the first half — which on Thursday night can only be described as amatzigane.

Continue reading AmaTzigane!

In his informative essay, Speight Jenkins calls “The Marriage of Figaro” “the perfect opera…The opera has, in six of its eight arias, as famous solo pieces as exist as well as many brilliant ensembles. Its story is involving but can be understood, and the music unfailingly illuminates and expands the text.” While the perfection of Mozart’s design for “Figaro” can be debated, the second cast line up assembled for the Seattle Opera’s current performance of “The Marriage of Figaro” is up to the task of breathing life into this “perfect opera.”

Continue reading Is “Figaro” the perfect opera?

Seattle Opera ends its current season with a brilliant and engrossing production of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro.”

Although performances of the work are ubiquitous throughout the world that cares about Western music, this opera never seems to tire, the jokes never grow stale. It is not only one of the most ebullient operas ever written, it is also one of the most sublime, reaching deep into the human psyche. The work, start to finish, glows with genius, thanks to Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte.

Continue reading A wondrous “Figaro” opened this weekend at McCaw Hall

Shut your eyes and picture yourself a thousand years ago in the newly established Greek Orthodox monastery of Grottaferra south of Rome. You are listening to the monks singing their religious observance: hymns, communion, praise and prayer.

Open them, and you are in Town Hall Saturday night, hearing Cappella Romana sing this same music. Sometimes, hearing secular groups sing chant, no matter how beautifully, something is missing. Monks whose singing may be less musically perfect have that indescribable extra, the religious belief which underlies all they sing, and it is unmistakable. It’s not a performance to them.

Continue reading Cappella Romana celebrates a millenial anniversary

2009 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn, and Seattle Pro Music marks the anniversary with performances this weekend of Meldelssohn’s oratorio Elijah.

Conductor Karen Thomas talks about the oratorio:

Continue reading Preview: Seattle Pro Musica in Mendelssohn’s Elijah

When the Mark Morris Dance Group first performed in Seattle, in the 1980’s, it was in On the Boards’ tiny space in Central District. Since then, the company has performed in nearly every venue in which dance performances are possible. Now, when the company is composed of approximately 20 dancers accompanied by a good-sized orchestra, even the medium-size theater is too  small to make the enterprise financially feasible.

Thus, the Paramount Theatre last year and the Paramount again this weekend for the local premiere of Morris’ triple bill of dances, otherwise known as “Mozart Dances.” Morris is at the height of his career and must appreciate the support of his hometown. The trilogy was given its premiere nearly three years ago in New York and has since done some traveling on both sides of the Atlantic.

Continue reading The Mark Morris Dance Group Returned to the Paramount Friday Night for a Trilogy of Dances, all set to Mozart

One of The Gathering Note’s affiliate partners is Emusic.  Regular readers and especially readers from the very beginning know that I think highly of Emusic.  For those who don’t know, Emusic is a subscription download service that offers one of the best classical music catalogs online.  It boasts Naxos, LSO Live, San Francisco’s in house label, CSO Rsound, BIS, CPO, Artek, Chandos and many other labels familiar to classical music fans.

If the breadth of the catalog isn’t enough, Emusic’s pricing is a deal.  For roughly $.25 a track, you download a set number of tracks each month according to the number of tracks you want each month.  Do the math.  A disc with one, four movement Bruckner symphony prices out at about $1.00 (Tintner’s cycle on Naxos, Norrington’s vibrato free recordings, and Haitink’s CSO recording of the Seventh are all available for download).

New subscribers to Emusic get 25 tracks free!  The offer is a great way to experiment with new repertoire and dip your toe into the music download water.  Periodically, we will assemble lists of albums totaling at most 25 tracks, the number of tracks you would get free as a new subscriber.

For this inaugural Emusic 25 I will focus on Beethoven and Brahms, two of the most familiar names in classical music.

Continue reading EMusic 25

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Continue reading Mahler’s 8th debuts on disc