Gathering Note

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

By R.M. Campbell

If ever there were a symphony program designed to please, it was Thursday night at Benaroya Hall with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra playing Gershwin and Tchaikovsky. Predictably audiences will love it.

A third work was performed, in its Seattle premiere — Cindy McTee’s “Double Play.” Born in Tacoma and educated at Pacific Lutheran University as well as Yale University and University of Iowa, McTee will not be upsetting any apple carts with this piece, composed in two sections but played as one Thursday. It was premiered last year by the Detroit Symphony of which Leonard Slatkin, SSO guest conductor for the night, is the music director. The work is tonally appealing, well-crafted and oiled, making no attempt to be in fashion musically but also making no attempt to go backward in time and spirit. She has plenty of ideas which she has assembled into a coherent whole.
Continue reading Popular program at Benaroya

By R.M. Campbell

Yevgeny Sudin made his Seattle debut at Meany Hall two years ago. I wasn’t there but by all accounts the concert was a huge success. The Russian pianist returned Wednesday night, offering Haydn, Shostakovich, Chopin, Liszt and Ravel. It was a glorious way to end the 2010-2011 President’s Piano Series.

Although he was born in Russia — St. Petersburg — in 1980 and received his early training there, he has not been a resident since he was 10. At first, he lived in Berlin, then London since 1997, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Music. His teachers include all sorts of exalted names like Murray Perahia, Claude Frank, Leon Fleisher and Stephen Hough. Traces of their influence can be heard in his playing today.

Sudbin enjoys a formidable technique. That is an understatement. He can seemingly do anything he chooses with confidence and panache. One connoisseur Wednesday made the astute observation that he has control over everything. He considers the score, working on the details then the whole — seamless and coherent. He knows what he wants. The result is astonishing, amazing really. Unlike many of his Russian colleagues, Sudbin is not flamboyant. He is a virtuoso of the first order, but that said his bravura never seems to say, “Look at me.” Rather, it demonstrates ownership. He possesses a big tone which he can modulate at will and knows how to play softly when the need arises. His double fortes never seem forced. Sudbin likes fast tempos, and undoubtedly there were those who would object. I didn’t. They could be thrilling.
Continue reading Sudbin closes UW piano series Wednesday

By Philippa Kiraly

When Early Music Guild, Seattle Theatre Group, and Spectrum Dance Theater collaborate on a production, you know it’s going to bring in a lot of expertise in various fields and strong characters who will need to work together. When you add in Stephen Stubbs of Pacific Musicworks, Arne Zaslove, doyen of Commedia del’Arte teaching in Seattle, and Theodore Deacon, whose hallmark is enlightening, inventive theater, you get a fascinating mix. What did they come up with in their production of two early Baroque masterpieces, Orazio Vecchi’s “L’Amfiparnaso,” from 1594, and Monteverdi’s “Il Ballo delle Ingrate” from 1607?

These two works can’t really be described as opera, but in the words of the program notes, as “curious and entertaining side trips…on the way to opera.”
Continue reading A Day on the Town, A Night in Hell