Tag: Review

Auburn Symphony’s Nordic Spring

By Philippa Kiraly

Grieg the Norwegian and Sibelius the Finn dominated last weekend’s concert by the Auburn Symphony. On Saturday night at the Auburn Performing Arts Center what came across most strongly was the host of dark colors those two composers evoke.

Building a portrait with each work they played, the orchestra and conductor Stewart Kershaw brought out those colors and the concomitant emotions to create a kaleidoscopic whole.

They began with Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” Suite No. 1, continued with his little tone poem “The Last Spring, “and followed that with his “Sigurd Jorsalfar” Suite. After intermission, turning to Sibelius, they played his big Symphony No. 2.
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SSO “Viola Spectacular” opened Thursday at Benaroya

Pinchas Zukerman

By R.M. Campbell

One often does not know how a particular symphony program comes into being. Take what the Seattle Symphony Orchestra is calling “Viola Spectacular with Pinchas Zukerman.” The first of three concerts was Thursday at Benaroya Hall. Does the idea belong to SSO music director Gerard Schwarz, the soloist or was it a collaboration of the two men? The end result was Zukerman as viola soloist in two works and conductor in one.

Zukerman, as violinist and violist and conductor, in that order, has been plying these waters for several decades. He is now in his early 60s. He has always been a musician of effortless grace, full-bodied technique, a virtuoso in any sense of the word. He was among the first of major instrumentalists to seek the podium. He still plays dozens of concerts every year in a good share of the world. leads his own chamber ensemble, is principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic and guest conducts a fair number of others.
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Peter Serkin returns to Seattle for Messiaen and Mozart

By R.M. Campbell

The Seattle Symphony program had plenty of merit — Ravel, Messiaen, Mozart and Brahms — and so did the playing and conducting Thursday night at Benaroya Hall. Douglas Boyd was the conductor and pianist Peter Serkin the soloist. The Scottish conductor is new to Seattle, Serkin is not.

The young conductor has a career that is ever widening, beginning in United Kingdom and expanding to the continent and North America. He is music director of the Manchester Camerata, principal conductor of the Musikkollegium Winterthur and principal guest conductor of the Colorado Symphony and City of London Sinfonia. Little wonder. He demonstrated Thursday in Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin” how he can create vibrant textures, clarity and balance and readily evoke the 18th century along with the 20th. The Ravel had remarkable restraint and balance in which everything had its place. The reading sustained admirable evenness. Ben Hausmann’s oboe solo was notable.
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Brahms, Brahms and more Brahms

By Philippa Kiraly

Last year at Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Winter Festival, one of the concerts was devoted to Schumann’s Piano Trios. It was such an enlightening and successful performance that artistic director Toby Saks asked the same three players to do a similar concert at this year’s festival with Brahms’ Piano Trios. The result was Friday night’s concert at Nordstrom Recital Hall.

In the pre-concert recital, pianist Alon Goldstein linked the two concerts with comments on the connections between the Schumanns and Brahms and the Schumanns’ reaction, as they wrote it themselves, when the young Brahms first came to their house to play for them. Then Goldstein played one of the pieces Brahms had performed on that occasion: the Scherzo in E-Flat Minor, Op. 4.
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It’s back; the Seattle Chamber Music Society Winter Festival returns to Nordstrom

By Philippa Kiraly

By this stage in the winter, many people are starved for more chamber music than they can get from the excellent but not so frequent performances on the UW Chamber Music Series. When Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Winter Festival arrives at Nordstrom Recital Hall, with four recitals and four concerts in four days by superb musicians in a small hall, where every move, every sound, every nuance from every player can be seen and heard close up, it’s like having a long-awaited feast.

This year’s festival began Thursday night. First up was the recital by pianist Adam Neiman, his first of three free recitals—last night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon—of all of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes, S.139, in honor of the composer’s bicentennial.
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A Requiem or a celebration?

By Philippa Kiraly

Thursday’s Seattle Symphony concert at Benaroya Hall was beautifully designed. First, a world premiere based on Mozart themes, followed by one of the symphonies and one of the horn concertos, and after intermission, the composer’s last work, his Requiem (which was completed after his death and from his notes by Franz Suessmayr). In execution, the program’s first half was satisfying, the second half less so.

Daniel Brewbaker is one of the composers who received a Gund/Simonyi Farewell (to artistic director Gerard Schwarz) Commission, the balance of works being performed at concerts throughout this final season for the conductor. Brewbaker dedicated his “Be Thou the Voice” for soprano and orchestra to Schwarz.
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A different concept


By Philippa Kiraly

The Phiharmonia Quartett Berlin needs no introduction to devotees of chamber music, with more than a quarter century of performances behind it and a reputation as one of the best.

Playing at Meany Theater last night on the UW International Chamber Music Series, it gave performances of Shostakovich, Beethoven and Debussy that were arresting, thought provoking and illuminating.

Why? In Steven Lowe’s admirable program notes, he describes the first two works with words of force in several places, such as, “slashing, commanding chords” (Beethoven), “nightmarish, scratchy” (Shostakovich), and his notes seemed perfectly in tune with what we often expect from both these composers.
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SMCO makes Benaroya debut with concert of German Masterworks

In less than two years Geoffrey Larson and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra (SMCO) have gone from a pick up ensemble of sorts, with an ever changing cast of musicians, to a core ensemble of 29 musicians that made its Benaroya Hall debut on January 15th. SMCO is an exceptionally talented group of musicians, that deserved it’s billing at the Nordstrom Recital Hall. The wind section is top notch, the French horns surprisingly good, and the string section — usually one of the weakest sections in a community orchestra like SMCO — better than average. Larson, although still learning the art of conducting, is an adroit leader who has a good understanding of musical shape, detail, and each piece’s greater message.
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Simone Dinnerstein impresses at Meany Theater

By Philippa Kiraly

Bach, to my mind, is the only Baroque composer whose music always survives with triumph, whether it’s played on period instruments, modern instruments, steel band, sung by the Swingle Singers, or given a rock beat.

Simone Dinnerstein‘s instrument of choice is the modern grand piano, and her program Wednesday night on the UW President’s Piano Series incorporated one of the composer’s English Suites, No. 3, and three transcriptions of different well-known Chorale Preludes by Bach from well-known pianists of their day: Italy’s Ferrucio Busoni, Germany’s Wilhelm Kempff and England’s Dame Myra Hess.
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Christmas on the Julian Calendar

By Philippa Kiraly

January 6th this year was Christmas day in the Julian Calendar, and this is the calendar followed by the Eastern Orthodox churches. So it was perfectly appropriate and not at all tardy for Cappella Romana to give a concert of Russian and Ukrainian Christmas music at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Montlake last Saturday night.

The church was nearly full of people, many from Seattle’s Russian community, and many in the intermission spent time looking at the fine mosaics and iconic paintings which adorn it.

The performance was conducted not by Cappella Romana’s music director, Alexander Lingas, but by an equally renowned scholar in Slavic music, this time of the 17th and 18th centuries. Mark Bailey was guest directing for the third time with this group.
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