Robert Schumann was born 200 years ago Tuesday, and that night, in this year of 2010, there was a chamber music concert in his honor at Nordstrom Recital Hall with members of the Seattle Symphony and pianist Simon Trpceski (who plays a Saint-Saens concerto at the regular symphony concerts this Thursday, Saturday and Sunday).
It began with several Schumann works we don’t hear so often and ended with the great Piano Quintet in E Flat major. It’s rare to hear public recitals of duets by professional musicians except for those playing piano, violin or cello, not that musicians wouldn’t want to, but because they can’t command a big enough audience to make it financially worth while for the presenters. May the Symphony promote more of these. Continue reading Schumann birthday celebration with Simon Trpceski
Our performance Friday night at the Moscow Conservatory was truly a wonderful experience. It was an honor to play at such a venerable institution. Founded in the 1860’s, it has been the training ground for countless great Russian musicians. Tchaikovsky, who presided over the Conservatory for a time, is represented by a gorgeous statue in front of the main entrance to the big hall. We performed in the smaller hall, which seats about 400. This beautiful venue was filled to capacity with musicians and friends of the performers and composers as well as the general public and students. The acoustic is incomparable and it was a joy to make music in a space that just keeps giving back.
This was a two part program, featuring the music of our friend Pavel Karmanov and a man named Sergei Zagney. Zagney’s music is absolutely in the style of the baroque and he had a wonderful ensemble of period instrument specialists, including a small complement of singers along with the strings, sackbuts and organ.
After Pasha Karmanov heard us play our Philip Glass quartet at Dom, he agreed that it really should be performed in the bigger venue, so he substituted the Glass for his own string quartet (a piece we love, by the way, and will be playing in Seattle in October) that we were to have performed at the Conservatory, thereby giving the Glass the real public premiere it deserves. What a mensch. The second part of the program therefore consisted of Karmanov’s “Cambridge Music” for piano quartet and “Innerlichkeit” for two pianos, bass, string quartet and flute, both of which were performed by wonderful Moscow-based musicians, and ODEONQUARTET playing the Glass and the aforementioned “Forellenquintet” albeit without the frying fish. I never did get the story straight as to the fish’s absence.
After the performance I met a composer named Baganov who had evidently played at the Good Shepherd Center last fall. He loved the concert and the Glass and is also a minimalist composer looking to move to the US. He is deciding between New York and Seattle. Let’s hope he chooses our fair city. The world is indeed small.
I am so grateful to everyone who made this trip happen: Pasha, Artur and Gennady, and all the people who run these great performance venues. Thanks, also, to Zach, for inviting me to post to the blog. It has been really fun!
Last night we played at a small venue called “Dom” (means “house”). This is apparently the only place in Moscow where contemporary, avant-garde, or unusual music is performed. Folkloric acts come through and we heard that our friend Carla Kihlstedt, the violinist who improvised with ODEON at Benaroya Hall in November on Wayne Horvitz’ “These Hills of Glory” had also played there. It’s about the size of the Good Shepherd Center Chapel, the big difference being the bar at the back (guarded by a papier mache troll who would have felt quite at home in Fremont). The owner is adamant that it is not a club, but rather a cultural center. We had about 30 or so mainly youngish people show up, which was a nice feel for the size of the space…folks availed themselves of the bar throughout the show, but mostly while the music wasn’t going on. There was definitely the vibe of a concert space, but people were clearly out on the town having a good time with friends. Definitely a concert venue to keep in mind as classical musicians reimagine performance spaces for the 21st century.
Pasha Karmanov announced the program from the stage, translating when necessary our comments about the pieces. Though only one of our works (Philip Glass’ Quartet No. 5) was an official Russian premiere, it was evident that no one had heard any of these pieces before. I think the Golijov “Tenebrae” was especially effective and moving, and the Glass is a real winner. At the end of our program the audience brought us out several times with unison clapping. I’ve never experienced that in the States. It was so sweet.
We also played all three of Karmanov’s pieces, including the two piano quintets (with the spectacular Peter Aidu at the keyboard): Michael Music and Forellenquintet, which are accompanied by film. Forellenquintet is, in fact, a fish story – set in a fish factory, it follows the life and times of a trout whose fate is sealed from the beginning. When we perform it this evening at the Moscow Conservatory, there will be an actual trout being fried on stage as we play. Or maybe in the lobby beforehand. I’m not sure which, but Moscow Conservatory evidently is more lax about such things than Benaroya Hall.
After a very long flight from Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles to Moscow, ODEONQUARTET finally arrived in Russia on a rainy Tuesday. We had time the next day before our rehearsal to take the Metro to Red Square and see the incomprehensibly huge square and its famous Basilica as well as the Kremlin. Probably on account of the rain, there was no line to get into Lenin’s mausoleum, so we took the opportunity to view the preserved and rather waxy-looking remains of the revolutionary leader in leisurely fashion. We had heard it would normally involve hours of waiting and we therefore hadn’t counted on visiting Mr. Lenin, but we were glad to have had the opportunity as it rated very high on he strangeness scale.
Following an afternoon of practice and much-needed rest, Pavel Karmanov, composer of three of the works we’ll perform on Friday, came to pick us up at our hotel to drive us to the Moscow Conservatory for rehearsal with our pianist. We had the chance to experience Moscow traffic at dinner hour – evidently there is no such thing as rush hour, the streets are generally packed except in the middle of the night – and arrived at our destination (about 2 miles away) in a brisk 35 minutes or so.
We didn’t know what to expect from pianist Peter Aidu, who is performing Karmanov’s two piano quintets with us, as we’d heard he’d only received the music recently, and we were absolutely delighted with his brilliant playing. In a nice coincidence, after finishing our rehearsal, we went to look at the concert hall and ran into none other than Ivan Sokolov, known to many Seattleites from his collaborations with the Seattle Chamber Players, most recently at On The Boards in February where he premiered a new work with cellist David Sabee. The music world is truly small and is was wonderful to see him on the other side of the planet. Vanya had a complex array of percussion instruments laid out on the stage of the concert hall for his percussion composition that will be premiered tomorrow night. Sadly we’ll miss it as we have our own performance at the House of Music at the same time. Our program will feature the Russian premiere (amazingly, since it was written in 1991) of Philip Glass’ Quartet No. 5, Marcelo Zarvos’ “Nepomuk’s Dances” and Osvaldo Golijov’s stirring “Tenebrae”.
Our Moscow Conservatory performance featuring Pavel Karmanov’s three works will be on Friday evening.
A performance by the American String Project is like chamber music on steroids. The Project beefs up the concept of the string quartet, bringing together fifteen musicians from across the country to perform arrangements of great works from the string quartet repertoire. But the size of the ensemble is not the only thing that’s been amplified here. The effect of adding more musicians to each part (and including a double bass) results in performances that crackle with the heightened energy and vivid colors of a large ensemble, but retain the intimacy and close communion of a string quartet. This is exciting music-making that has a lot to offer, whether you’re new to string quartet repertoire or can hum the opening bars of each of the Beethoven quartets from memory. Continue reading Second night of American String Project features Mendelsson & Beethoven
What Barry Lieberman, and the American String Project do – taking well known and sometimes not so well known – pieces for string quartet, quintet and arranging them for an orchestra of fifteen string instruments isn’t new or even that unique. Composers and musicians have always tinkered with their own music and the music of others in this way. Sometimes they improve the product other times they don’t. Just this morning I was listening to Gideon Kremer’s orchestration of Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata. I can report, it isn’t an improvement on the original sonata.
What is unique, is that the string project, now in its ninth season, isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. This season alone, five of the six pieces to be performed are new arrangements by Lieberman. The sixth, Johannes Brahms’ String Quintet Op. 111 was first arranged in 2003, but for this season Lieberman went back to his arrangement, adjusting the piece for Sunday’s performance. All in all, Lieberman has created an impressive repertory of sixty arrangements for string orchestra. Continue reading Barry Lieberman’s American String Project returns for a ninth season with five new arrangements
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s Piano Trio in D Minor Op. 11 added interest and drama to the Onyx Chamber Players’ season-long commemoration of her brother Felix’s birth-bicentennial, and the death-bicentennial of their musical grandpapa, Franz Josef Haydn. Rolling in like ominous thunder, the piano part in this mature (1846) work of Ms. Mendelssohn Hensel underlines a lyrical theme, a big open melody for the cello, in the manner of the piano figure in Schubert’s famous song “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel.”
“A bridge to the Romantic era,” is how pianist David White described Fanny Mendelssohn’s music, in his spirited remarks before the concert on Sunday afternoon May 16. He also described Fanny’s considerable contributions to her younger brother’s works.
As the fates would have it, a volcano burping and spewing ash over continental Europe, prevented Xavier Philips (the Seattle Symphony’s scheduled soloist for the past weekend’s concerts) from performing a recital on Friday evening of French cello works. Even as one recital came apart, another, at Olympic Hall in West Seattle came together.
Music Northwest’s 2009/2010 chamber series came to a close on April 23rd with a recital for combinations of cellos and piano. Music Northwest’s chamber series is a gem in Seattle’s growing classical music community. The series distinguishes itself for the quality and diversity of repertory Jane Harty (Music Northwest’s artistic director) chooses and the quality of the musicians who perform each concert. Continue reading Menotti and more at Music Northwest’s final recital of the season
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.”
The Corigliano Quartet. Photo credit: Michael Jinsoo Lim.
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.
Gathering Note 