In the video interview I conducted with Christopher Seaman a few days ago, his final answer to a question I posed, was obscured somewhat by a “fade” between clips. I uploaded the full answer, without any obstructing special effects. This should sate the interested.
Seaman conducts an energetic program Thursday
By: R.M. Campbell
The Seattle Symphony Orchestra entered into its holiday season Thursday night at Benaroya Hall with a varied, easy–to-like concert, only some of which had any bearing to Christmas. No one seemed to complain.
That is not surprising because the guest conductor for this program, to be repeated through Sunday afternoon, was Christoper Seaman, who conducted with flair and ebullience for everything on the podium. If this music were supposed to bring simple pleasure to the audience, Seaman was determined to carry out his assignment. The seasonal offerings were mostly of Tchaikovsky, one which has become a part of the Christmas weeks nearly everywhere in America and the other which has nothing to do with Christmas.
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Questioning the conductors: Christopher Seaman
I talked with conductor Christopher Seaman yesterday. Seaman is in town guest conducting the Seattle Symphony in a series of concerts titled “Festive Holiday Encores.” Just as the name implies, the program is essentially one classical music hit after another. Popular pieces by Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky Korsakov, Dukas, etc. will fill Benaroya Hall this weekend. In the 20 minutes I had with Maestro Seaman, we talked about a wide range of subjects. He shared with me some memorable moments as timpanist with the London Philharmonic, including his admiration for Georg Solti. We also talked about his tenure with the Rochester Philharmonic. Seaman is regarded as an audience builder, and he discussed how he expanded the audience in Rochester and why people go to concerts. His answer is moving and obvious. His time with the Rochester Philharmonic comes to an end in 2011. In closing, I asked Seaman the obvious question: are you interested in the Seattle Symphony post? You’ll have to watch the video to find out what his answer was.
Zach Carstensen chats with conductor Christopher Seaman from gatheringnote on Vimeo.
Quarter notes: upcoming
December is here and the holiday concert season has begun. Tomorrow Christopher Seaman leads the Seattle Symphony in a concert which resembles a prolonged encore. Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky Korsakov, Dukas, and Humperdink are all represented on the program. On Friday, Renee Fleming performs a recital at Benaroya Hall. Fleming is one of opera’s reigning divas. Her performances routinely sell out in these parts. In Wallingford, on the same night, local violinist James Garlick and pianist Judith Cohen, perform a hefty recital of Ives, Debussy, Bartok, Corigliano, and Bach. Garlick told me over coffee at Fuel a few weeks ago, he was inspired to play the Ives second sonata after reading through the piece this past summer with pianist and Ives aficionado Jeremy Denk. This weekend, Seattle Pro Musica performs their holiday concert – Eastern Lights – on the 5th. There is another performance on the 12th. George Shangrow and Orchestra Seattle trot out their Messiah on Sunday the 6th. Currently OSSCS is leading in the “best Messiah” poll. Shangrow doesn’t cut, trim, or abridge any of Handel’s music. Every note is played. This makes Orchestra Seattle’s Messiah the longest in the region. Also on Sunday Opus 7 will perform Heaven on High, a concert featuring two early choral pieces by Mendelssohn and Rautavaara’s Canticum Mariae Virginis.
Save the date
I receive a regular stream of emails from arts organizations inquiring about TGN’s calendar and how their concerts can be listed. In an earlier version of this blog, I actually managed a Google calendar that was embedded into the site. I am one person, and keeping track of Seattle events was time consuming. Right about the time I was getting calendar burn out Instant Encore came along.
Instant Encore can be found at http://www.instantencore.com
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Nutcracker” Returns to McCaw Hall
By: R.M. Campbell
For more than 30 years now, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of “The Nutcracker” is a fixture of the holiday season. Actually, its is in most American cities but few have similar visual charm and panache. And so, PNB opened its 2009 edition of this veritable warhorse over the weekend at McCaw Hall. By the end of the run of more than 40 performances, some 125,000 people will have seen the production. Nothing else in the region comes close to those numbers.
Sometimes people wonder why the company doesn’t just commission new decor and costumes and new choreography. Why should it when the current one sells so many tickets? A new production is always a risk from every standpoint, just as the present “Nutcracker” was in 1983 when it was first produced by a fledging ensemble. PNB is so established now there aren’t so many who remember those nervous days at the beginning when it struggled for everything. This “Nutcacker” was a huge gamble that paid off. They don’t always.
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Off the shelf
It has been a busy fall for live performances and equally busy for new, recommendable album releases. A survey of some of the best, new recordings is overdue. One of the most notable releases, is the San Francisco Symphony’s recording of Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony. It is hard to get this piece to sound right in performance and on disk. So much is happening at all times where do a conductor, sound engineer and musicians begin? MTT seems to have a handle on all of the forces before him, and that allows him to proceed with an idiosyncratic performance, full of energy, which captures the spirit of the performance the recording is taken from. Whether you will enjoy this album depends on how you like your Mahler. If you want a performance which is straight faced and buttoned up then you should steer clear of MTT’s romp. However, if you like your Mahler, unpredictable and inventive then this disk is for you.
French pianist returns to Meany Hall
By: R.M. Campbell
Lise de la Salle was by most accounts a prodigy. Born in France in 1988, the pianist made her recital debut, so to speak, at 9 in a live broadcast on Radio-France and her concerto debut in Avignon four years later. At 13 she graduated from the Paris Conservatory. She made her American debuts at 16, in New York and Washington, D.C. Now, she has a full-fledged international career.
Her recital at Meany Hall gave ample evidence of her multi-faceted talent. She has huge technical resources, not surprisingly, but that is only the beginning, unlike so many other virtuosi of her age. She has refinement, individuality, musicality. Pretty remarkable for someone 21 years old.
Puget Sound’s best Messiah
It won’t be very long before concert stages will be filled with music customarily associated with the holidays. Last year, I asked who had the best holiday concert. The winner was Seattle Pro Musica.
For better or worse, Handel’s Messiah is standard holiday music. I want to know, who has the best Messiah? Are the SSO’s modern instruments, size, and chorus preferable to Seattle Baroque’s historically informed style? What about Orchestra Seattle’s hybrid approach? Is the Bellevue Phil the cream of the crop or do the PNB musicians that make up the Auburn Symphony do it better?
The Mathematics of the Pathetique
Tchaikovsky and John Luther Adams don’t appear to have much, if anything in common. More than 100 years separate the two in time. They are separated by continents and countries. Their styles are hugely dissimilar too. Tchaikovsky epitomizes the lushness of the romantic period and Adams pushes the boundaries of music with his experimentations in sound. By accident this weekend, two concerts, one featuring Adams’s percussion piece Mathematics of Resonant Bodies and the other, which ended with Tchaikovsky’s melancholy Sixth Symphony, showed me that there is at least one common feature.
Gathering Note 