Gathering Note

If you made it to the Nordstrom Recital Hall last Friday you were likely part of history. Not history of the epoch altering kind, but of the musical kind. It was the first time many of the people in the audience, most with decades of experience with Seattle’s classical music scene, could recall a live performance of Bela Bartok’s daunting Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. The piece was part of the Seattle Symphony’s final chamber concert of the season. The program also featured Bartok’s Contrasts, Mendelssohn’s First Piano Trio, and George Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance for violin and piano.

Balance problems, especially coming from the piano plagued most of the performances.  This is a familiar story for the recital hall.  Sometimes this problem is overcome, other times not so much. The only piece where the musicians seemed to conquer the hall’s notably fussy acoustic was the Mendelssohn trio. Kimberly Russ, the Seattle Symphony’s resident pianist, has probably spent more time grappling with Benaroya and Nordstrom’s acoustic than any of the other pianists playing on the program. This came through in a tempered performance at the keyboard which allowed the eloquent playing of cellist Roberta Downey and violinist Jeannie Wells Yablonsky to be heard. Although I would hardly describe the trio’s performance as fiery, it wasn’t merely a competent run through of the piece either. Russ, Downey, and Yablonsky made this work sound philosophical and mature.

Continue reading Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion closes out SSO chamber series

By Philippa Kiraly

Mina Miller used these words when introducing the latest Music of Remembrance concert Monday night. Miller is artistic director of the concert series which she began thirteen years ago, and every concert has been one which leaves the listener with much to ponder after.

Monday’s performance at Nordstrom Recital Hall was no exception. Part of the concert focused on the boys in the concentration camp Terezin and the poetry they wrote; part was a memory of the ancient settlement of Jews in Thessalonika, of whom there were 54,000 at the beginning of the war, and after the nazis’ systematic massacre, about 1100 at the end, two percent.

As usual, there was music by a composer who died in the camps, in this case the String Quartet No. 2, “From the Monkey Mountains,” by Pavel Haas, and music of today’s composers in memoriam.
Continue reading “A reminder of the blindness of genocidal hatred”

Few ensembles today command the interest of modern music aficionados like the JACK quartet. The members of the quartet — violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland — met while studying at the Eastman school of music. They studied with the pioneering Kronos Quartet and Arditti Quartet. Though, JACK’s popularity these days more closely resembles the successful history of the Kronos Quartet, the artistic excellence of the Arditti Quartet came to mind when I heard JACK play this week at Town Hall as part of Joshua Roman’s Town Music series.

There is possibly no more persuasive proponent of Iannis Xenakis’s chamber music than the JACK Quartet. This and Xenakis’ popularity in some music circles has helped propel JACK’s success. The group released a well-received compilation of the composer’s music for string quartet. Tetras, an eighteen minute witty, abrasive romp is one of the first pieces the four musicians learned to play together. It continues to be a favorite of the ensemble.
Continue reading JACK and Xenakis pair perfectly at Town Hall

By R.M. Campbell

The 2010-11 Seattle Symphony Orchestra season has been one of conducting debuts — both American and European. Most of the men have been interesting and well-prepared, all of which is a reminder of the talent that lies just beyond our shores.

One of the best of the lot is Jakub Hrusa, a Czech conductor who made his debut Thursday night at Benaroya Hall, with the program of Martinu, Shostakovich, Honegger and Haydn, to be repeated Friday afternoon, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. He is worth more than one hearing. He is young, only 30, yet conducts with maturity and musical insight. Already a fully developed artist, he seems equally at home in Haydn and Shostakovich. He has a keen ear for drama and is just as capable of producing well-balanced pianissimos as he is fortissimos. That is not a talent many conductors possess.
Continue reading Jakub Hrusa makes his debut with the SSO

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”