Ades’s Violin Concerto is given its premiere Thursday night at Benaroya Hall

Composer Thomas Ades
Composer Thomas Ades

The Seattle Symphony Orchestra season keeps going deeper and deeper into summer. While one might think it would dumb down its programs, because of the longer, sunnier days, it is doing almost the opposite with well-considered, well-crafted collections of music. But it is not only the music that is often so striking but also the music-making.

Thursday night at Benaroya Hall is a case in point. There were the popular works as well as the local premiere of Thomas Ades’ Violin Concerto tucked in between. What made the evening particularly splendid was the high level of the playing, and conducting by David Robertson.

Continue reading Ades’s Violin Concerto is given its premiere Thursday night at Benaroya Hall

Some final thoughts on the Van Cliburn Competition

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This year’s competition had a lot of excitement after the last concert finished. The press in attendance was very divided regarding who the medalists would be. Most of the critics agreed that Bulgarian pianist Evgeni Bozhanov played himself out of contention with his bombastic style. But all of the five remaining competitors were mentioned as possibilities. We should have done a pool to see who would’ve predicted the outcome correctly.

The awards program featured Portland-native Fred Child as the master of the ceremonies. It turns out that the blind Japanese pianist who shared the gold medal, Nobuyuki Tsujii, released a recording last year (many of the pianists in the competition have already done albums), and it’s now selling like hotcakes, according to this report. That album also contains a couple of Tsujii’s own compositions.

I was impressed to learn how thoroughly and carefully the participants are initially screened. Richard Rodzinski and John Giordano assemble a jury that travels around the globe to hear the best pianists. Still, ten of the final 30 pianists had some Juilliard connections, which either points to how good Juilliard is or means that the screening process still needs some improvement. In any case, at the competition itself, the jury puts their scores into a computer (somewhat like the BCS system for NCAA football) and the computer gives them the final results.

Of course, not everyone is happy with how things turn out. Benjamin Ivry, in his article in the Wall Street Journal, thought that the jurors were way off the mark. He sounds fairly bitter. It should be noted that Ivry incorrectly states that Giordano is the regular conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony. Miguel Harth-Bedoya is the conductor of that orchestra. Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News points out, in this posting, some other inaccuracies in Ivry’s argument. Also, Ivry doesn’t think that blind pianists should play with orchestras. That’s nonsense. Then a deaf composer like Beethoven shouldn’t write music.

Now I’m wondering if there should be a competition for pianists in which only new music is performed. Assembling a jury for such a competition would be very interesting. Just for fun, all the pianists could be asked to play John Cage’s 4’33”.

Press conference with Richard Rodzinski and John Giordano

In the photo, John Giordano is on the left and Richard Rodzinski on the right.
In the photo, John Giordano is on the left and Richard Rodzinski on the right.

Richard Rodzinski, president of the Van Cliburn Foundation and John Giordano, chairman of the jury, subjected themselves to numerous questions by the press. Here’s a compilation of some of the questions and answers (some of which wandered away from the questions). This conversation took place before the final round. I just haven’t had enough time to post it until now.

Is there any way to assess the career potential of someone who only gets to the preliminaries or the semifinals versus someone who gets to the finals?

Rodzinski : Those who have studied these competitions find that the cream does rise to the top. You can have winners at the top who are very close together so that their final rankings are extremely close. The outcome depends on the subjective judgment of jury.

Giordano : That’s why we seek to have a diverse jury, and subsequently their judgments may lead to a top three winners who are equally deserving.

Rodzinski: In order to avoid a split jury, it is critical to have jurors approach music pretty much the same way, so that there is a cohesiveness, and no one has to compromise on a candidate. We have something built into our system so that if three or more jurors feel that a candidate is a potential medalist and does not pass on to the next round then we open it to discussion. That helps us to prevent ending up with a compromise candidate. I think that no major talent has slipped through because of this. Continue reading Press conference with Richard Rodzinski and John Giordano

Seattle Symphony musicians do their own thing in the New Chamber Series

Orchestral musicians often chafe under the bit in orchestra performances where they don’t get to choose the music or the interpretation but must bow to another’s dictum. So many, if not most, play chamber music for pleasure, where they can follow their own inclination as to type of music, colleagues to play with, and just have fun or play for an audience if they want. (A note of experience here: my husband played viola in the Cleveland Orchestra for 40 years, and when not doing so he played Renaissance or Baroque music on period instruments.)

It’s also fun and enlightening for an audience to see orchestra musicians in another light. The New Chamber Series at Nordstrom Recital Hall is a wonderful showcase for this, and an outlet for the Symphony musicians for whom it is presented.

Continue reading Seattle Symphony musicians do their own thing in the New Chamber Series

Louise Nadeau, a splendid dancer of nearly two decades with Pacific Northwest Ballet, shines with her company in a performance dedicated to her Sunday night at McCaw Hall

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Louise Nadeau in Paul Gibson’s The Piano Dance. Photo Angela Sterling.
Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Louise Nadeau in Paul Gibson’s The Piano Dance. Photo Angela Sterling.

Pacific Northwest Ballet says goodbye very well. At these special occasions — for example, Kent Stowell and Francia Russell as well as Patricia Barker — there is pomp and circumstance, sentiment, speeches, but not too many and not too long, and, of course, dancing. Barker and Nadeau said their farewells at their prime, even though they are both in their mid-40s. They made it easy to appreciate their numerous virtues.

Continue reading Louise Nadeau, a splendid dancer of nearly two decades with Pacific Northwest Ballet, shines with her company in a performance dedicated to her Sunday night at McCaw Hall

Van Cliburn Winners announced – Asians sweep!

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After a long wait, the audience again took their seats in Bass Hall to hear the who the winners of the Van Cliburn Competition are. So, here are the jury’s decisions:

Gold: Haochen Zhang, Nobuyuki Tsujii
Silver: Yeol Eum Son
Crystal: not awarded

Steven De Groote Memorial Award for the Best Performance(s) of Chamber Music: Evgeni Bozhanov, Yeol Eum Son

Beverley Taylor Smith Award for the Best Performance of a New Work: Nobuyuki Tsujii
Jury Discretionary Awards: Alessandro Deljavan, Lukas Vondracek, Eduard Kunz
Audience vote: Mariangela Vacatello

The jury vote was cummulative assessment after every round. I only heard the final round, but still came sort of close.

Van Cliburn Competition – sixth (and final) concert

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I’ve only got a few minutes to collect my thoughts about the six concert in the final round of this competition. Nobuyuki Tsujii gave the recital portion with pieces by Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt. He did very well (especially considering that a Japanese TV crew just stopped in as well as more Japanese press and his university colleagues), but seemed to be unable to get some of the spontenaity and joy that some passages in the Liszt.

Haochen Zhang played the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 with technical perfection. He was really with the orchestra. I’m still not sure about his emotional range.

Di Wu played the trumph card, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and it was dynamite. She was in her element and gave everyone the ride of their lives with full dynamic range. She is back in the running for a medal.

I don’t envey the jury in trying to figure out how to score all of this. I’ve got Vacatello at the top with Tsujii and either Son or Wu in second or third. We’ll find out very soon what the judges say.

Symphony of Meditations

At the end of this month the Seattle Symphony will premiere a major new work by Aaron Jay Kernis .  The piece is the composer’s third symphony and is titled “Symphony of Meditations.”  It was originally intended for the 2007/2008 Seattle Symphony season.  Kernis has based the work on an 11th Century Sephardic poem.  I will be publishing a Q&A with the composer later this month right here on The Gathering Note and in the JT News.

Anyone have a question they would like me to ask the composer? If so, leave your question in the comments section and I’ll be sure to ask!

Van Cliburn Competition – fifth concert

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For those of us who wanted to hear how quietly a pianist can play in a concert hall, Di Wu answered our prayers. The Chinese pianist used the softest, lightest, most delicate touch in her performance of Bach’s Toccata in F-sharp minor, BWV 910. Her playing forced the audience to listen so intently that no one in Bass Hall in last night’s concert (Saturday, June 6) moved a muscle. For her next piece, Wu transitioned to another time zone by playing Schoenberg’s “Klavierstucke” Op. 11. Wu wonderfully created the abstract and random landscape in this work. Moments in the piece also seemed to convey a series of questions and answers as the music switched from one path to another. Wu ended her recital with Ravel’s “Gaspard de la nuit,” and I felt that she excelled in achieving a spontaneous feeling in her playing – especially in some passages that were lightening quick. Overall, Wu performed very well and made a fine case for herself to move up the ladder in the competition.

The concerti portion of the program began with Evgeni Bozhanov’s performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18. The Bulgarian pianist set out to play the piece as loudly as possible, drowning out the cellos near the beginning, and continued through the enitre piece with this to-hell-with-the-orchestra attitude. This turned the Rachmaninoff work into a pianist versus the orchestra affair which everyone increasing the volume to the highest level possible. Bozhanov also messed up several passages and was very erratic at times. His crass interpretation left me numbed but the audience exploded, so I guess his gambit worked.

In sharp contract, Mariangela Vacatello gave a thoroughly engaging performance of Prokofiev’s Piano concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26. Her sound was very balanced and precise. She wonderfully built up tension in the first movement and released it with the orchestra as a partner in making the music happen. I loved the way that Vacatello alternated the robust and tender themes of the second movement, and she ended the piece with the orchestra in an electrifying blitz. Fortunately, the audience recognized her genius in this performance and gave her a standing ovation.

I think that Vacatello moved herself into gold medal contention with this performance. Tsujii is still there as well, with Wu and Son following. But there’s one more concert to go.