Tag: Seattle

Compania Nacional de Danza returns to Seattle

By R.M. Campbell

After two well-received visits to Meany Hall by the Compania Nacional de Danza, its third tour, which opened Thursday night, was much anticipated. With reason. The company, essentially a vehicle for the choreography of Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato, is known for the vividness of its movement, willingness to be expansive and ability to have a foot in the past and one in the future. His work is known to a wide audience in Seattle for two pieces in the repertory of Pacific Northwest Ballet, including one, “Jardi Tancat,” which it took to New York.

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Despite twists of fate, Seattle Symphony delivers

By Philippa Kiraly

It’s the hall mark of a professional orchestra that when unexpected obstacles threaten to overcome a concert, musicians rise above them and achieve a high level of performance anyway. This week the Seattle Symphony rose to the challenge and triumphed.

I’ve been at a performance elsewhere where the lights went out and the orchestra performed in the pitch dark—music it knew well, granted. I’ve heard firsthand about a travel performance where the musicians’ trunks didn’t arrive, and they played borrowed instruments in borrowed clothes (Moscow), and another where the stagehands didn’t like Americans and made the musicians dress and warm up on the loading dock ( Paris).

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“Pulchinella Gets Even”

By Philippa Kiraly

The correct title of Paisiello’s 1770 opera is “Pulchinella Vendicato.” Y ou can translate vendicato as vengeance or revenge, or as puppeteer Stephen Carter put it, gets even.

However you don’t have to wait long to find out just what Pulchinella does in that vein as the opera begins Friday this week and goes on weekends until May 2, at Northwest Puppet Center.

This is the 11th consecutive year opera has been mounted by the Puppet Center, with a fine early music ensemble of singers and instrumentalists, and of course, the puppets themselves. Stephen Carter has made several new puppets for this show and all of them have new clothes, made by Christine Carter.

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Quarter notes: Gergiev, Holst, and Pro Musica

V. Gergiev about conducting, his schedule, and Russia.

Seattle Pro Musica is a semi-finalist for the American prize and the group’s conductor, Karen Thomas, is also a semi-finalist in the conducting category.  Congrats Karen and Pro Musica!

Gustav Holst and Hans Graf .

Amelia is coming fast, be sure to check out to learn about Seattle Opera’s first commission in forty years. Check out part two of Seattle Opera’s making of series.

Coming up on May 1st, I am one of the three MC’s (Gavin Borchert and Dave Beck are the other two) for new music festival at Town Hall. $5 for twelve hours of music is just about the best deal around.

Portland Baroque comes to town

By R.M. Campbell

For more than a quarter of century, the Portland Baroque Orchestra has been an integral part of the early music scene on the West Coast. Any number of luminaries have been associated with the period orchestra. including Ton Koopman Richard Egarr, Andrew Manze and Monica Huggett, the ensemble’s artistic director for 15 years. At one time the orchestra attempted to create a base in Seattle. That was not successful, so we have to wait for special opportunities to hear this exemplary group of musicians.

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Questioning the conductors: Gilbert Varga

Gilbert Varga is in town this week to conduct the SSO in a series of concerts with Stravinsky and Beethoven as the focus. Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto will have the help of Horaccio Gutierrez; after the intermission it’s Stravinsky’s ballet Petrouchka.

Varga is the son of violin legend Tibor Varga. The younger Varga also played the violin but switched to conducting. Varga is or isn’t (depending on whether he is telling you his biography or you are reading the bio prepared by his agents) a newbie to North American concert halls. Regardless, his North American career has picked up considerably during the last decade, and he is regularly making stops at the continent’s leading orchestras.

Varga’s claim to fame, perhaps, comes from his commanding baton technique. It is aggressive, imposing, and precise. You can get a sense of his craft by watching this video of him .

My conversation with Varga on this point reminded me of an old measure the writer and composer Virgil Thomson used to ask when evaluating a new piece of music: is it merely good clock work or can it actually tell time too?  Applied to Varga, is there a vision and inspiration behind his surgically precise slicing?

I am not able to attend the concerts this weekend (traveling), so I will leave this last point for audiences to judge.

from on .

Gilbert Varga takes the podium in a commanding performance with the SSO

By Philippa Kiraly

With flair, Swiss conductor Gilbert Varga made his debut on Seattle Symphony’s podium Thursday night for remarkable performances of Enescu’s “Romanian Rhapsody No. 1, Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka” and, with Horacio Gutierrez, Beethoven’s P iano Concerto No. 4.

It was hard to take your eyes off h im. Varga almost danced the music, gracefully using his entire body and the whole podium to convey to the orchestra what he wanted, and so clearly that the musicians responded with the precision of a Rolls Royce engine. He used no score for either the Enescu or Stravinsky, allowing him to give his attention to the musicians throughout.

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One of the very great string quartets: the Emerson

By Philippa Kiraly

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.”

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The masterpiece by Prokofiev and Sergei Eisenstein

By Philippa Kiraly

How many film directors hope to boast that their movies are being shown and revered more than 70 years after their making? There can be few talking movies in that category before Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Prokofiev collaborated on the epic “Alexander Nevsky” in 1938, one of the first and arguably the most massive movie production ever at that time and the forerunner of others in similar vein from “Ben Hur” to “Spartacus” and more.

“Nevsky” is black and white and a bit grainy by current standards, but what has helped to keep it high in the category of great films is the musical score by Prokofiev. To his great credit, Eisenstein allowed the composer considerable rein in his musical portrayals of the plot.

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Corigliano Quartet performs at Cornish College

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.

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