Tag: Review

St. James recreates Medieval service

By R.M. Campbell

Of all the rituals of the Roman Catholic church, one of the most mysterious and profound, and perhaps less known, must be its Tenebrae service traditionally said the last three days of Holy Week. St. James Cathedral held it Wednesday night with all due solemnity and dark eloquence.

The ambience of the church set the tone. As one entered, the lights were low and shadowy — dark actually: “Tenebrae” means “darkness” in Latin. There was a soft glow to the church including backlighting of the glass windows above the doors and the rich decor of the stained windows in the clerestory. There was a handful of candles principally six mounted high around the altar and 15 on a candelabra and a pair flanking the chair of the Very Reverend Michael G. Ryan, pastor of the cathedral, who presided. The musical forces were spare. They included the excellent singers of two of the church’s vocal ensembles, organist Joseph Adam and viola da gambist Margriet Tindemans. The forces in that large space were small but everything could be heard, and it had meaning.

The singing, chanting, praying and speaking were seamlessly coordinated, sounds going back and forth from the transept to the apse. The darkness appeared to make everything more of another world than this one. After the reading of each psalm one of the large candles was snuffed out. Slowly other lights were dimmed and eventually only 15 were left . They too, two by two, after the Benedictus Dominus was sung, were extinguished by servers leaving only the top one left. Then that was snuffed out, leaving the church in silence and complete darkness to commemorate the effect of the death of Christ. The only sound was that of clappers, which are used throughout the world in all sorts of rites and religious services as well as theater, The effect was haunting. At the very end, the candle at the top of the candelabra was relit to signify that Christ had risen. People left the church quietly.

Bach to the future

Bach, of course, anchored the program, with his Suite No. 2 in B Minor, BWV 1067, and his Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. For the second half, music director Christophe Chagnard chose one of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ tributes to the composer, the “Bachianas Brasileiras No 5” in an arrangement for string orchestra by J. Krance; and lastly, a work by one of Bach’s contemporaries and friends, Telemann’s “Don Quixote” Suite.
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Exciting Ravel, robust Brahms at the SSO

By Philippa Kiraly

Russian conductor Vassily Sinaisky takes the podium this week for four concerts with the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall, the first of which was Thursday night. The well-designed program, not blockbusters but two big works by Brahms and Ravel, created a study in contrasts between the two. Written a short generation apart, the Brahms Double Concerto for violin and cello from 1887 and the complete ballet score of Ravel’s “Daphis and Chloe” from between 1910 and 1912 are alike only in their use of a big orchestra and their vitality and musical imagination.
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Sinaisky returns to Seattle with Brahms and Ravel

Conductor Vassily Sinaisky

It was couples only night Thursday at the Seattle Symphony. French and German. Ravel and Brahms. Cello and Violin. Daphnis and Chloe. Returning to the podium was the conductor Vassily Sinaisky.

With everyone wondering who will be the Seattle Symphony’s next music director, Sinaisky is undoubtedly at the top of the list for some people. The conductor is currently the head of the Malmo Symphony and the Chief Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russian is eyeing an American Post as the next step in his career.

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OSSCS takes Torke, Strauss, and Bartok to Meany Hall

About once a year, Orchestra Seattle performs its “big orchestra” concert at the University of Washington’s Meany Hall. A few years ago, Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” was chosen for the concert. Last year, the orchestra was absent from the Meany Hall stage. This season, Orchestra Seattle returned to the University of Washington with a concert of music by Torke, Strauss, and Bartok.

For the first half, Shangrow programmed Michael Torke’s Saxaphone Concerto and Richard Strauss’ “Four Last Songs.” Eleanor Stallcop-Horrox sang the Strauss and Erik Ibsen-Nowak played the Torke as soloists. After the intermission, the orchestra took on Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.
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Local pianist Dainius Vaicekonis presents Beethoven sonatas at UW

By Dana Wen

Some consider Beethoven’s thirty-two sonatas for piano to be the “New Testament” of piano literature. (The “Old Testament” is the forty-eight Preludes & Fugues of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier). When viewed as a whole, the sonatas serve as a microcosm of Beethoven’s life, containing some of his finest musical ideas and enabling us to trace his development as a composer. These pieces play a role of biblical proportions in the world of piano repertoire and serve as one of the cornerstones of Western classical music. It’s no wonder these works have been so widely studied and discussed. Recently, the lecture-recital has become a popular method for pianists to share their ideas about the Beethoven piano sonatas. In the past few years, several notable and high-profile pianists have presented lecture-recitals on these works. In 2006, Andras Schiff gave an outstanding series of lectures on the entire cycle of Beethoven sonatas. Although the great Alfred Brendel retired from concert performance in 2008, he toured the United States last year to present his lecture-recital on musical character in the Beethoven sonatas.
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Hesperion XXI: intriguing as always

By R. M. Campbell

It was founded in 1974, as Hesperion XX, by Jordi Savall and Montserrat Figueras as well as Lorenzo Alpert and Hopkinson Smith. The latter two have since left the quartet leaving Savall and Figueras as founding members. On this current tour are two excellent and well-established musicians — Pierre Hamon (ney, gaita and flute) and Dimitri Psonis (oud, santur and morisca), from France and Greece, respectively. The name was also altered to Hesperion XXI accommodate the 21st century. Other than those changes, the group remains the same, exploring with uncommon intelligence and thoroughness music of Europe particularly, and a subsection of that, the Iberian peninsula, as well as the Middle East and Far East. A few examples: the “Golden Age of Spain,” “Madrigals of Monteverdi” and the Creole Villancicos of Latin America.”

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Ingrid Fliter Makes Her Seattle Debut Thursday night at Benaroya Hall

By R.M. Campbell

Until pianist Ingrid Fliter was awarded the Gilmore Artist Award four years ago, she was little known beyond the borders of her native Argentina. That coveted prize gave her international press she could not buy and launched her career. Prestigious dates at prestigious halls and with prestigious conductors followed quickly. So did a recording contract with EMI.

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Hugo Wolf Quartet at Meany

By R.M. Campbell

The group, with violinists Sebastian Gurtler and Regis Bringolf, violist Gertrud Weinmeister and cellist Florian Berne, offered lean and tangy accounts of Haydn, Janacek and Brahms. Haydn’s String Quartet in G Minor, the third of three quartets of the Opus 20, was the least successful. Isn’t that often the case with string quartets today? It was anxious, with inconsistent ensemble and lack of organic growth. It appeared the quartet hadn’t made up its collective mind about how to approach the work. The very free-flowing ease with which Haydn is often associated was not entirely absent but often so.

Janacek’s Second Quartet (“Intimate Letters’) was a different kettle of fish. Here the quartet seemed on home turf, although why Haydn would not be home turf for a Austrian quartet seems difficult to understand. Maybe chronology is more important than geography. In any event, the performance was compelling, at once anguished, disconcerting, uneasy. Janacek is better known for his operas and orchestral works, but this quartet is worthy of attention. The Wolf Quartet must have an affinity for its character, because it was so deeply in it. All of its varied emotions, and the range is quite wide, were given acute expressions. With the Wolf, one heard some of the same potency one hears in his operas.

The conclusion was the last quartet Brahms wrote, in B-flat Major. One could have assumed the lean approach heard in the Haydn and Janaceck would have been cast aside. That was not the case. The Wolf was precisely the same, although certainly there were stylistic differences. This is not a complaint. One hears Brahms played so often with the heart on the sleeve that to hear something less openly expressive is welcome. Gurtler has a finely wrought tone that gives the quartet its essential tonal attributes. This was counterbalanced, somewhat in the Brahms by Weinmeister’s rich viola sound. Brahms was very generous to the viola, and Weinmeister took every advantage, lending a rich, handsome sound to what Brahms provided. Moreover, there was energy and variety to the playing. This was not everyday Brahms.