Gathering Note
Notes from the concert hall
Tag: Review
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This season with the SSO, nearly every week is an adventure in brand new music written especially for this, Gerard Schwarz’s last season as music director. The Gund/Simony commissions are in addition to the new pieces and premieres already scheduled for the season. This was again the case this past weekend. Two new pieces, one…
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By Philippa Kiraly Young American musician Lara Downes opened UW’s President’s Piano Series Wednesday night with an enlightening program of 20th century American music. All the composers but one are well known: Roy Harris, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, plus Florence Price, and all were born close together around the turn of the century,…
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By Philippa Kiraly It restores faith in the future of classical music to go to hear the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra. There are many kids listening attentively in the audience to the mass of kids playing on stage. The big orchestra is professional in demeanor, and the performance is high class playing. While much of…
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By Philippa Kiraly There can be only have been one really good reason for Seattle Opera Young Artists Program to perform Donizetti’s “Viva la Mamma!” or to give it its full Italian name “Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali.” That reason lies in the person of baritone Daniel Scofield, who undertakes the role of the aforementioned…
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By Philippa Kiraly It wasn’t until the concert itself that the title of Northwest Sinfonietta’s performance last Friday, “Gypsy Nights,” became clear. Yes, music director Christophe Chagnard’s own work titled “Opre, Roma!” with its three guitars clearly had a gypsy component, but Dvorak, Mahler and Shostakovich? As the concert progressed at Nordstrom Recital Hall, Chagnard’s…
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By Philippa Kiraly On tour around the country, the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra made a stop at Benaroya Hall, Sunday night. It seems as though Seattle’s Russian community turned out for it in droves—I heard little English spoken that night, and it was a deeply attentive audience. The two halves of the program were separated…
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By Philippa Kiraly If, like me, you don’t really know where the Inca Train went, it was laid out for us at the start of this Seattle Symphony concert by guest conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya. It went north from Peru to Southern Colombia through Ecuador, and south from there through Bolivia and Chile to Northern Argentina.…
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By Philippa Kiraly Violinist Ani Kavafian, pianist Andre-Michel Schub and clarinetist David Shifrin had been friends and musicmakers together for years before they formed the Trio made up of their last names, and the communion betweeen them was clear Wednesday night at the University of Washington’s Meany Hall. Opening the UW International Chamber Music Series…
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To hear pianist David White tell the story of one of the most famous clove triangles in the history of music, Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann’s music wouldn’t exist as we know it without the presence of Clara Schumann — friend to Johannes, wife of Robert, accomplished pianist, and gifted composer. it is hard to…
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By R.M. Campbell When Speight Jenkins, general director of Seattle Opera, was not in his usual seat just prior to the beginning of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” Saturday night at McCaw Hall, there were worries: the soprano had a sore throat, the tenor a bad back, the baritone, a sour stomach. But, as Jenkins quickly…