Gathering Note

To the front of me was David Stock. To my left, Harvard composer James Yannatos. Just another week with the Seattle Symphony, and another world premiere courtesy of the Simonyi/Gund Farewell Commissions project. David Stock’s Farewell Commission – Blast – wasn’t the only new piece on the program this past Saturday however. James Yannatos’ reworked version of Ritual Images also received a world premiere performance by Schwarz and the orchestra. Stock’s piece, a boisterous mélange of percussion, brass, and pulsing strings got the concert started, but it was Yannatos’ Ritual Images which commanded my attention more. Not simply an Ives knock-off, Ritual Images expands the American primativist vocabulary.  Yannatos stitches where Ives would have collided bits of Americana together. Ritual Images lacks the free wheeling feeling humor that makes Ives’ music so much fun to hear. But Yannatos makes up for this deficiency with a better sense of orchestration.
Continue reading The week in classical music: Stock, Yannatos, Lucia, and the University of Washington

By R.M. Campbell

Over the past five years, since the arrival of Peter Boal as artistic director, Pacific Northwest Ballet has been busy acquiring works of Twyla Tharp, including a pair it commissioned a couple years ago. Those were the product of a long residency when Tharp was in house, working with dancers, meeting donors and indulging the press. They are invariably evocative, sometimes compelling, sometimes witty and always inventive. One’s attention does not wander away at any moment.

The company revived three of those pieces Friday night at McCaw Hall: “Opus 111” and “Afternoon Ball,” the commissioned works, plus “Waterbaby Bagatelles,” first danced by PNB four years ago. It was a splendid night at PNB, first-rate, with attention to details and acute dancing by the whole company. I liked “Opus 111” better than I did at the premiere as well as “Waterbaby Bagatelles.” Perhaps they were better danced. Tharp returned to town for the evening.
Continue reading PNB reexamines Tharp

By R.M. Campbell

One of the strangest phenomena to emerge in post-World War II Japan was a dance movement called Butoh. It was a reaction against just about everything, Japan and otherwise, and once it crossed into the West made a powerful impression. Movement was often inexplicable, bizarre, disturbing, grotesque. And very dark.

With more extreme proponents, performances could be difficult to watch which, I suppose, was the point. One group was quite different. Certainly it was a Butoh ensemble in philosophy and style with its shaven heads, bodies painted in white rice flour and very slow movement. But Sankai Juku was more about poetry than shock value.
Continue reading Sankai Juku returns to Seattle, this time at the Paramount

By Philippa Kiraly

The Seattle Symphony’s new series, Beyond the Score, debuted at Benaroya Hall Sunday afternoon to a good-sized house, with quite a lot of kids present. The idea and the format began five years ago with the Chicago Symphony, creative director Gerard McBurney and executive producer Martha Gilmer, and involves taking one iconic orchestral work, deconstructing it for an hour with the aid of the orchestra, conductor, visual images, a narrator and a couple of actors, and then playing the work in its entirety in normal concert fashion. It’s been highly successful in Chicago, bringing in new audience and working so well that there are now three programs a year, each repeated.

Judging by the audience’s response to Debussy’s “La Mer,” this could well happen here.
Continue reading CSO’s Beyond the Score series debuts at SSO

By R.M. Campbell

The Seattle Symphony Orchestra’s Visiting Orchestra Series may be somewhat diminished this season but its opening gesture Friday night at Benaroya Hall was anything but that.

When Kremerata Baltica made its local debut a few years ago, it created a powerful impression for its finesse and technical acuity. Nothing has changed in the intervening years, as demonstrated this weekend. This string orchestra of some two dozen young musicians, gathered from the various Baltic states, is still sharp-edged with transparent textures, impeccable ensemble and handsome sound. Everything about the group is a pleasure as well as informed and articulate. It is modern in all sorts of ways, the best sort of ways. This is an orchestra that knows how to play pianissimo, one so focused it sails across the footlights.
Continue reading Kremerata Baltica opens visiting orchestra series at Benaroya Hall

Michael Francis, a young British conductor who also plays double bass with the London Symphony made his debut with the Seattle Symphony Thursday night.  Though he had a small orchestra at his disposal, Francis made up for it with a program that was conceptually sound, challenging for musicians, and rewarding for listeners.

Francis’ rise to prominence has followed the same well-worn path that has promoted other virtually unknown maestros into the spotlight. Three years ago, Francis was recruited to the podium from the ranks of the LSO, when 12 hours before a concert Valery Gergiev pulled out. A month later, the John Adams pulled out of a concert he was to conduct with the LSO. Again, Francis was pushed to the podium. Today, Francis regularly acts as an assistant conductor with the LSO helping to prepare performances and with rehearsals when Gergiev can’t.

Continue reading Michael Francis debuts with the Seattle Symphony

By Gigi Yellen

Muscular. Delicate. Impeccable. Polished. Quick descriptions, all, of performances that deserved a bigger audience Saturday night at Nordstrom Recital Hall, opening the third season of Seattle’s Russian Chamber Music Foundation concerts. Pianist Natalya Ageyeva, artistic director, at the keyboard for two of the three works on the program, anchored the concert with a dazzling technique. Her Russian-composer programming was pretty dazzling, too, introducing a rarely-heard piano trio by Schubert’s contemporary Alexander Alyabiev; five Novelettes by the teenage Alexander Glazunov; and, in a sterling performance, the 1941 Piano Quintet in g, op. 57, by Glazunov’s most famous pupil, Dmitri Shostakovich.
Continue reading Autumn evenings return to Nordstrom Recital Hall