Gathering Note

I wish I could let the Sumi Hahn thing over at the Seattle Times and here on TGN go. But, I can’t. I have heard from plenty of really smart, thoughtful people on why her review was badly written. Her style is her own. Does she sometimes use language that is a little over the top? Yes. Might she be casual, even dismissive in her assessments? Most definitely.  Sumi writes how she writes, and having written a freelance piece for the Times, the editors are professional and attentive to preserving a person’s voice.

But this is all dust, it is irrelevant, and it obscures the larger point that few people have brought up or disagreed with.  Hahn thought the SSO/Lang Lang concert blew. She described the Pastoral as “soporific.” This one word is a critical hand grenade that should blow up in your face. She is calling the SSO and Schwarz sleep inducing. Ouch! 

Everyone who writes about classical music or reviews concerts is imperfect. We are prisoners of our own biases, moods, likes and dislikes. We are prisoners of language and the way we write too.  The great thing about music criticism is no one has developed a style book for how to write a review. You can read any review on this site and find something unacceptable.  I sometimes read old posts I wrote and cringe. I want to draw your attention to a few examples from this site and elsewhere, that the classical music intelligentsia should find just as unfortunate as Sumi Hahn’s review.

Continue reading Not letting it go

The recession hits the Honolulu Symphony.  No wonder Andreas Delfs is interested in the music director opening here in Seattle.  From the article:

The 109-year-old symphony, which bills itself as the oldest American orchestra west of the Rockies, said it will cancel all of its November and December concerts and made no guarantees that the rest of its 2009-10 season would go on.

“We cannot spend money we do not have,” said Majken Mechling, the symphony’s executive director. “We cannot continue with business as usual.”

and soon the darkness rip

The symphony is just the latest in a string of high-profile bankruptcies to hit the local economy.

Saturday night, Michael Miropolsky took the artistic helm of the Bellevue Philharmonic in a rousing concert of Russian music at the Theatre at Meydenbauer Center.

Miropolsky has been assistant principal second violin with the Seattle Symphony since 1991, but has pursued a career in conducting and musical direction simultaneously, with a particular emphasis on working with young musicians and much of which he is continuing along with his new appointment as music director of the Bellevue Phiharmonic.

Continue reading A new era begins for the Bellevue Phiharmonic

Since its beginnings in 1992, Cappella Romana has performed in various locations in Seattle but none has seemed like home to the group until its performance Saturday night at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Montlake.

The acoustics are excellent, the ambience, all curved walls, domed ceiling and iconic mosaics, fits Cappella Romana’s continuing exploration of early and late music from the Christian East and West, with an emphasis on the music of the Orthodox Church. The group will give its Seattle performances there all this season. (The pews, however, are uncomfortable. Take a stadium cushion.)

Continue reading Cappella Romana at St. Demetrios

Between two full -length ballets — “Romeo et Juliette” and “The Nutcracker” — Pacific Northwest Ballet is offering a a set of 20h-century works, two dating from the latter half of the 20th century and another two from the past couple of years.

The company has committed itself to new works, adding one piece after another in rapid succession. All the works on this mixed bill, which opened Thursday night at McCaw Hall, were introduced to PNB in the past four years. Jiri Kylian’s “Petite Mort” and  Val Caniparoli”s “The Seasons” were making their bows on Thursday.

Continue reading PNB Opens Mixed Bill Thursday Night at McCaw

When Shostakovich wrote his final symphony, the Fifteenth in 1971, arguably the composer didn’t have much new to say with the form. Closer to the end of his life, Shostakovich would write masterpieces like the Viola Sonata and Fifteenth String Quartet; pieces unique for their economy and breadth of expression. Still, in his final symphony, the composer finds a way to sum up his creative life in ways that parallel other great symphonists. Like Mahler, Beethoven, Bruckner; Shostakovich takes his own ideas, many of them put down paper in earlier symphonies, and combines them in a unique, final statement on the symphonic form. Schwarz chose the Fifteenth, along with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Alexander Borodin’s incomplete Third Symphony, for the Seattle Symphony program that began on Thursday evening.

Continue reading Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto blazes while Shostakovich’s Fifteenth concludes

All Souls Day is an ancient feast day in the Roman Catholic Church in which those on earth pray for the faithful suffering in Purgatory. The Mass for the Dead has been part of All Souls Day since the 14th century. The texts were written to offer "expressions of consolation" for the present and hope for the future. St. James Cathedral, a church which couples spirituality with the power of music in remarkable ways, observes the day by incorporating one of the great and sublime requiems of the past 250 years into actual liturgy of the Mass of All Souls.

Mozart’s much celebrated "Requiem" is often heard in this context, So too the requiems of French composers like Faure and Durufle. These works, in general, were intended for the concert stage, but they achieve an  additional kind of resonance when they are set in the manner of St. James.   

Continue reading All Souls Day Celebrated at St. James Cathedral

Earlier this week, I got the chance to sit down with John Hollenbeck.  Hollenbeck and his group, the Claudia Quintet came to town to perform in the Ear Shot Jazz Festival.  Even though he was playing as part of a jazz festival, Hollenbeck’s music can’t be easily described as jazz nor can it be categorized as classical music.  The Ear Shot performance was the culminating concert of a West Coast Tour.

In addition to his work with the Claudia Quintet, Hollenbeck was also one of the performers who premiered Meredith Monk’s “Songs of Ascension” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music late last month.  Hollenbeck celebrates the release of his new CD later in the month with a performance and release party at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge.  

I talked with Hollenbeck for over forty minutes – longer than either of expected – I have divided the interview into a couple of parts. I hope you enjoy.

If you live in Bellingham be sure to head over to the Mount Baker Theater to hear the Whatcom Symphony and guest violinist Sarah Chang play Brahms’s Violin Concerto.  Chang’s performance in Washington follows her recent CD release of the same concerto on the EMI label.  The Brahms is reason enough to go, but the orchestra is also playing Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Each of the Seventh’s movements shake and groove, warranting the symphony’s label as the apotheosis of dance.