By RM Campbell
Every so often Pacific Northwest Ballet devotes an evening to the work of George Balanchine, such as the mixed bill which opened Thursday night at McCaw Hall. These programs are always welcome not only because they are danced well, but they are done with an authentic voice.
Continue reading PNB offers an all-Balanchine program for April
Gilbert Varga is in town this week to conduct the SSO in a series of concerts with Stravinsky and Beethoven as the focus. Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto will have the help of Horaccio Gutierrez; after the intermission it’s Stravinsky’s ballet Petrouchka.
Varga is the son of violin legend Tibor Varga. The younger Varga also played the violin but switched to conducting. Varga is or isn’t (depending on whether he is telling you his biography or you are reading the bio prepared by his agents) a newbie to North American concert halls. Regardless, his North American career has picked up considerably during the last decade, and he is regularly making stops at the continent’s leading orchestras.
Varga’s claim to fame, perhaps, comes from his commanding baton technique. It is aggressive, imposing, and precise. You can get a sense of his craft by watching this video of him .
My conversation with Varga on this point reminded me of an old measure the writer and composer Virgil Thomson used to ask when evaluating a new piece of music: is it merely good clock work or can it actually tell time too? Applied to Varga, is there a vision and inspiration behind his surgically precise slicing?
I am not able to attend the concerts this weekend (traveling), so I will leave this last point for audiences to judge.
from on .
By Philippa Kiraly
With flair, Swiss conductor Gilbert Varga made his debut on Seattle Symphony’s podium Thursday night for remarkable performances of Enescu’s “Romanian Rhapsody No. 1, Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka” and, with Horacio Gutierrez, Beethoven’s P iano Concerto No. 4.
It was hard to take your eyes off h im. Varga almost danced the music, gracefully using his entire body and the whole podium to convey to the orchestra what he wanted, and so clearly that the musicians responded with the precision of a Rolls Royce engine. He used no score for either the Enescu or Stravinsky, allowing him to give his attention to the musicians throughout.
Continue reading Gilbert Varga takes the podium in a commanding performance with the SSO
By Philippa Kiraly
We are so fortunate that the Emerson String Quartets, arguably among the greatest of string quartets since recordings began, comes regularly to perform at Meany Hall.
It was here Wednesday night with a program which, on the face of it, might have suggested to unadventurous audience members that they skip this one. Not a bit of it. The hall was virtually full of people maintaining an unusual hushed attention throughout the performance including between movements, of Charles Ives’ Quartet No. 1, “The Revival Meeting;” Lawrence Dillon’s String Quartet No. 5, “Through the Night,” commissioned by the Emerson and completed last year; Barber’s famous “Adagio” in its original version, a movement from his String Quartet No.1; and Dvorak’s charming Quartet No. 12, “American.”
Continue reading One of the very great string quartets: the Emerson
By Colton Carothers
Nixon in China is the operatic interpretation of Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China. Equally historic was Vancouver Opera’s staging of John Adam’s Nixon in China in its Canadian premier for Vancouver’s Cultural Olympiad near the end of March. With an Olympic sized cast and an Olympic sized budget, you would expect a gold medal. In selecting this piece itself, Vancouver Opera went for the gold: Nixon is a behemoth of an opera, requiring large orchestrations, costly sets and a large ensemble. Did it live up to these Olympic sized aspirations?
Continue reading Only the Vancouver Opera could go to (Nixon in) China
By Philippa Kiraly
How many film directors hope to boast that their movies are being shown and revered more than 70 years after their making? There can be few talking movies in that category before Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Prokofiev collaborated on the epic “Alexander Nevsky” in 1938, one of the first and arguably the most massive movie production ever at that time and the forerunner of others in similar vein from “Ben Hur” to “Spartacus” and more.
“Nevsky” is black and white and a bit grainy by current standards, but what has helped to keep it high in the category of great films is the musical score by Prokofiev. To his great credit, Eisenstein allowed the composer considerable rein in his musical portrayals of the plot.
Continue reading The masterpiece by Prokofiev and Sergei Eisenstein
A number of notable albums have landed on shelves over the past few months. A number of them with local connections. Leading the bunch are two William Schuman releases from Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony. Schwarz and the local orchestra have been slowly recording all of William Schuman’s published symphonies and assorted orchestral pieces for Naxos. The final two releases in the series, disks featuring the Eighth Symphony and the Sixth Symphony , come coupled with shorter orchestral pieces also played by the SSO. The former includes the ballet score Night Journey and Variations on America; the later, Prayer in a Time of War and the New England Triptych — two patriotic pieces. On both releases, Schuman’s pieces are given heartfelt readings and the recordings are natural, faithful representations of the orchestra and the Benaroya Hall acoustic.
Continue reading Off the shelf: Seattle Symphony, Ehnes, and the Prism Quartet
Even though half of the Corigliano Quartet calls Seattle home, and another member has family in the city (Amy Sue Barston is the sister of Elisa Barston, principal second violin with the SSO), the group’s performances in the area haven’t been as plentiful as you might expect. To my knowledge, the last one was in 2008 when the group made their debut on the University of Washington’s International Chamber Series. This quartet’s local schedule this season includes two concerts at the Cornish College of the Arts and a forthcoming performance in May with Simple Measures.
A Corigliano performance tends to be an adventure in contemporary music. This doesn’t mean the pieces they play are replete with dissonances, microtones, and explorations of the percussive properties of string instruments, far from it. The ensemble takes its name from the composer John Corigliano, a living, breathing, active artist who finds inspiration in the popular neo-romantic idiom that has demonstrated music can be easy on the ears and challenging to hear.
Continue reading Corigliano Quartet performs at Cornish College
The Boston Symphony contemplates for calling in sick to work.
The Atlanta Symphony , and he doesn’t have orchestra biz experience.
Courtesy of , the Oregon Symphony’s Carlos Kalmar gets called up to in Chicago next week.
What will Kalmer conduct while he is in Chicago? None other than Mason Bates’ Music From Underground Spaces.
Reminder
: I’ll be live blogging the Amelia sneak peek tomorrow afternoon. Check back here at 2 pm and you can access my live blog of the event. To watch the live blog, click the link below and a new window will open up. Or, if you prefer, you can click the Live Blog tab at the top of the page and you can watch an embedded version of the blog. I hope you tune in, It should be fun and interesting.
Seattle Opera is holding a “sneak peek” event for bloggers on April 13 from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Seattle’s community of arts bloggers (who are they?) will be meeting with the creative team responsible for Amelia. It is the first commission for the opera in more than 40 years. Perhaps more striking is Amelia is an American opera, set in America, about American things. American opera isn’t as cemented in the repertory as its French, German, and Italian counterparts. Of course, there are exceptions. Nixon in China (John Adams), Porgy and Bess (George Gershwin) and Vanessa (Samuel Barber) are successful relative to other American operas, but I would hesitate to call them repertory staples.
Amelia is a big deal for Seattle Opera and could be considered a more important operatic achievement than the every-four-years Ring cycle. In any event, you can use the link below to open up a pop out window that will let you follow the live blog. Or, you can always check out the Live Blog page by clicking the tab at the top of this page.
Gathering Note 