Gathering Note

What if Seattle’s music director picks up an east coast orchestra in addition to his soon to be west coast duties? He wouldn’t be the first music director to take on multiple orchestras. With James Levine stepping down from his duties with the Boston Symphony, Morlot’s ties to the orchestra, and his two week residency with the band next November it may not be that far fetched. As was the case in Seattle the last few years, every guest conductor who passes through Boston over the next few years is going to be given serious consideration for the director position.  That would include Morlot too.

From the BSO 2011-2012 season press release:

LUDOVIC MORLOT RETURNS TO BSO TO CONDUCT BERLIOZ, MOZART, CARTER, AND BARTÓK, NOV. 17-22
In a diverse program November 17-22, the BSO welcomes back to Symphony Hall rising French conductor Ludovic Morlot as well as distinguished American pianist Richard Goode, who performs Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 in C, K.503. Also featured on the program is the BSO’s own principal flutist Elizabeth Rowe, who steps in front of the orchestra as soloist in Elliott Carter’s Flute Concerto, a work that received its U.S. premiere with Ms. Rowe and the orchestra in February 2010. The program opens with Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture and concludes with Bartók’s Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, which contains about two-thirds of the music from the composer’s original scandal-inducing ballet about three cash-strapped men who attempt to use the provocative dancing of their female companion to attract and steal money from passers-by.

MORLOT TO LEAD MUSIC FROM RAVEL’S DAPHNIS AND CHLOÉ AND MAHLER 1, NOV. 26-29
In his second straight week on the podium, Ludovic Morlot continues to demonstrate his versatility. To open the program, Mr. Morlot leads the orchestra in the Symphony No. 4 of John Harbison, a work from 2003 by a composer whose music has been featured prominently by the BSO is recent seasons. The concert ends with Mahler’s at times brooding, at times vigorously energetic First Symphony. In between the two symphonies is Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from his masterful ballet Daphnis et Chloé, beginning with a scintillating depiction of the sunrise and gradually gaining momentum until finally expending its energy at the end of a frantic orgiastic dance.

By R. M. Campbell

Les Violons du Roy, the Canadian chamber orchestra, along with English tenor Ian Bostridge gave an astonishing, often revealing concert Wednesday night at Benaroya Hall, under the auspices of the Seattle Symphony Visiting Orchestra Series. While the concert represented a double local debut for orchestra and soloist, Bostridge has appeared twice in Vancouver, presented by the Vancouver Recital Society, founded by the ambitious and fearless Leila Getz.

I was at Bostridge’s Northwest debut recital in Vancouver, and even though 15 years have elapsed, I have not forgotten his high intelligence, his unique musical profile and ability to draw drama from whatever is at hand. Nothing has changed in the intervening years, except his repertory has widen and deepened. Now, he does not only music of the Baroque era but also Schubert and Schumann and Stravinsky, Mozart, Britten and Janacek, plus an impressive range of more contemporary music.
Continue reading Double debut at Benaroya

By Philippa Kiraly

In the 15 seasons since its inception, the Auburn Symphony Orchestra has been steadily nurtured and an audience built by conductor Stewart Kershaw, general manager Lee Valenta, a devoted board and a supportive city, and one might consider last weekend’s final performances of this season as a watershed.

For the first time, the orchestra performed Mahler, in fact an entire Mahler program, with
the rarely-played extra movement, “Blumine,” of the Symphony No. 1, the “Songs of a Wayfarer,” and finally, the First Symphony itself, the “Titan.”

It is indeed a titan, for both orchestra and listeners, coming in at 55 minutes and jammed full of musical ideas, musical pictures and descriptions, and a chance for just about eveyone in the orchestra to shine. It’s also unlike any symphony that came before, and the original Budapest audience in 1889 was quite unprepared for this and reacted to it with considerable dislike.
Continue reading ASO tackles “Mahler’s Titan”

Seattle is about to be invaded by two prominent string quartets, both champions of non-standard repertory, new music, and everything in between. ETHEL comes first with two performances with Simple Measures, the local chamber music effort striving to remove the mystery around classical music followed by two performances by the JACK Quartet as part of Joshua Roman’s Town Music series.

ETHEL, who is known for playing with amplification, will play “unplugged” for their Seattle performances. Philip Glass’s music from the movie the Hours is on the program as well as others. JACK start’s their west coast swing with a performance at the Sorrento Hotel as part of Chamber v. Chamber and concludes with a stop at Town Hall with music by Gesualdo, Ligeti, Xenakis and others.

Continue reading Quarter notes: May Day (plus) quartets

By R.M. Campbell

There were familiar and unfamiliar faces at the Seattle Symphony Orchestra concert Thursday night at Benaroya Hall. Violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsy was the soloist and Pietari Inkinen, the guest conductor. Music of Jean Sibelius, Benjamin Britten and Bela Bartok was played. All together, the concert was satisfying.

Inkinen is an able young man, music director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra since 2008 and principal guest conductor of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra for the past two years. He was equally adept in the Sibelius and the Bartok, each making its own demands on the podium. For the Seventh Symphony of the Finnish composer, Inkinen created a voluptuous sound and expansive phrases. Lines seemed to go on forever. Sibelius has long been patronized by critics and the professional music community for being too romantic in an unromantic century. Virgil Thomson, the eminent music critic and sometime composer, in 1941, called the Seventh “pretty amateurish,” claiming that the “gray and dirty-brown orchestral coloring” is neither the depiction of “the Finnish soul nor the Finnish landscape. . . . I think Sibelius just orchestrates badly.” A year earlier, Thomson called the Second Symphony “vulgar, self-indulgent and provincial beyond all description.” He felt no need to apologize for its long-limbed expression. The reading was restrained, as was Bartok’s “Concerto for Orchestra,” but not flat. Dynamic variation was never exaggerated, although sometimes I wished for a less monochromatic palette. That said, there was considerable beauty in what Inkinen produced, including a sea of smooth gestures. With Inkinen, one hears the Russian influence on Sibelius. It is genuine, something to be appreciated.
Continue reading SSO looks to Sibelius, Britten and Bartok

By Gigi Yellen

The Seattle concert series called Simple Measures rarely risks investing in such a high-profile touring ensemble as Ethel. That makes this weekend’s two concerts as important as they are accessible.

With no stage separating performers and audience, in Simple Measures’ usual friendly neighborhood venues, the internationally renowned string quartet known as Ethel will not be playing amplified.

For them, that’s odd.

Violinist Cornelius Dufallo, who joined the group six years ago (just after their last Seattle appearance), says he’s excited about sharing with Seattle’s “vibrant arts scene” their all-acoustic program, “Present Beauty.”
Continue reading Unplugged ETHEL: two Seattle concerts, one groundbreaking string band

By Philippa Kiraly

In the operas so far this season, Seattle Opera has presented singers on stage from Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Israel, Nicaragua, Australia, Turkey, France, Argentina, Mexico and, coming up in “The Magic Flute,” Canada, Japan, Russia and England. In addition, of course, to the American singers.

Where does general director Speight Jenkins find them?

The job of casting takes Jenkins to Europe a couple of times a year, to New York, and anywhere else he happens to be where there is opera and a singer he wants to hear.

“It isn’t ever just the voice,” says Jenkins. “The voice is just the first step. We have to assume the person has a voice and technique. Beyond that, it’s the dramatic sense, the passion. Can they pronounce the words while singing? Can they inhabit the character? Have they got heart? There’ve been times when I’ve stopped a young singer and asked: ‘What are you singing about?’ and they have only the vaguest idea.”
Continue reading Heart and passion: casting at Seattle Opera

By Philippa Kiraly

Some years ago, the Early Music Guild advertised a part time position for Marketing and Development, and ended up hiring a young woman named Kris Kwapis. Not coincidentally, she also happens to be one of the continent’s best performers on Baroque trumpet and in demand for concerts, as well as being a teacher at Indiana University and now also in the new early music program at Cornish College of the Arts. It’s our good fortune to have her here.

Saturday night, the Early Music Guild audience had a chance to hear her perform several trumpet concerti with Seattle Baroque Orchestra at Town Hall, in a program titled Sound the Trumpet.
Continue reading Sound the trumpet

By Philippa Kiraly

It’s always enlightening to go to hear Seattle Symphony musicians playing chamber music, as they now do regularly at Nordstrom Recital Hall. The chance to hear players not merged in a group, with often unusual offerings, were again what drew audience to Friday night’s concert.

The unusual was the string quartet, his only one, composed by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos in 1945. This is a remarkable work, some 30 minutes long, of considerable complexity: a piece that would take multiple hearings to take in its full measure, its layers, its intricate justapositions of rhythm and melody, its combination of European style and Brazilian musical heritage. It would be hard to hum any part of it, though often one instrument would have a long melodic line with the other two playing unexpected decorative accompaniments around it. It was given a masterly performance by violinist Mariel Bailey, cellist Bruce Bailey and guest cellist Laura Renz, a well balanced trio.
Continue reading SSO musicians take to Nordstrom in wide ranging chamber program