Back in the day, when Joshua Roman was the hot-shot, super-talented, ever-modest, principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony the press and younger concertgoers — many who had never set foot in a recital hall before Roman came along — fawned over him. Roman was the closest thing Seattle had to a classical music rebel – the Cameron Carpenter or Nigel Kennedy of the cello. His programs showed musical interests stretching beyond the standard repertory. Steve Reich’s Clapping Music showed up on one recital program as did Roman’s own arrangement of a handful of pop songs. You could count on him to dress down (jeans, casual t-shirt) from to time. We loved it. He loved. And Seattle’s classical music world happily rode the waves Roman created.
Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski has got to be one of the busiest musicians I have had the pleasure of talking with. He is in Seattle performing a total of five concerts with the SSO. Earlier in the week he joined musicians from the SSO in a chamber music concert honoring the 200th birthday of Robert Schumann. Last night, he started a four concert series (one of the concerts will be played in Olympia tonight) with the orchestra where he plays Saint Saens’ Second Piano Concerto.
People who have followed Trpceski’s career since he made his North American debut in Seattle told me there was plenty to enjoy in his rendition of Schumann’s epic Piano Quintet. Even those people who are cool to Trpceski’s distinctive style told me the Piano Quintet crackled with unexpected velocity, poetry, and interpretive depth.
I ended my chat with a simple question: what piece of music would you like to play that you haven’t? Trpceski launched into a long list of concerti — Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, Stravinsky. With each new concerto, he pointed out concerts where he would have his chance at the piece. Trpceski is also spending time later this year playing chamber music in Chicago with friends. There is also his Carnegie Hall debut. Busy doesn’t begin to describe this pianist’s schedule.
Gerard Schwarz has long had an affinity for French music, thus a program like the one that opened Thursday night and continues through Sunday afternoon at Benaroya Hall.
There were many pleasures along the way. Principal among them was the reading of Saint-Saens’ Second Piano Concerto by Simon Trpceski. Now, in full possession of an international career, the Macedonian musician is not a stranger to Seattle. He was introduced to the city via the Seattle Symphony Orchestra when he was still in his 20s (turning 30 last year) and has returned both as a soloist with the orchestra and as a recitalist at Meany Hall. His concerts are typically well-received. Continue reading Trpceski and an all French program take the stage at the SSO this weekend
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
It’s that time of year again. Orchestras, professional and volunteer, are wrapping up their seasons. Two of Seattle’s many community orchestras finished their seasons this weekend. The Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra – University of Washington conducting student Geoffrey Larson’s creation – closed their inaugural season with a concert titled “Just Dance.” The next day, George Shangrow, Orchestra Seattle, and the Seattle Chamber Singers ended their 2009/2010 series of concerts with a jazz (and Bernstein) inspired program that featured two works by Washington composers and choruses from Leonard Bernstein’s incidental music to the Lark. Continue reading The 2009/2010 season comes to an end for OSSCS and SMCO
Before both “Swan Lakes,” “Romeo and Juliets” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “The Nutcracker,” in Kent Stowell/Maurice Sendak’s production,” “Sleeping Beauty,” Merry Widow” or “Cinderella,” there was the sturdy “Coppelia,” bringing sunlight to everyone in its presence despite its unremarkable qualities. It entered the repertory in 1978 but has been in retirement for a while, waiting for a successor. Now it has one — splendid, engaging, charming and full of all sorts of dancing. Its premiere was this weekend at McCaw Hall.
The work is a masterpiece, even if it doesn’t seem so, and it possesses one of the most amiable scores, by Leo Delibes, in ballet history. Its tunes may not possess the emotional resonance and power of Tchaikovsky, but they are felicitous, melodious and warm. Continue reading PNB introduces its Coppelia this weekend at McCaw Hall
Robert Spano (who was here in April) . The four composers Spano has championed – Jennifer Higdon, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Gandolfi, and Christopher Theofanidis — have been dubbed the “Atlanta School,” and all have seen their profiles rise as a result of Spano’s efforts. The most encouraging aspect of Spano’s work is what it has done for audience development and ticket sales. I’ve excerpted the most interesting section of article, one that should be read by every arts administrator struggling to augment audiences.
“The most significant aspect of the Atlanta School project may be the trust it is building for new music in general. A semi-staged version of the opera “Dr. Atomic” by American composer John Adams sold at 88% of paid capacity during the depths of the economic recession. In a reversal of usual box-office patterns, concerts with music by Atlanta School composers typically sell at about 84% of capacity, says marketing vice president Charles Wade, versus an average of 78% for other classical events.”
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!
Under the steady baton of Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, the energized playing of the Seattle Youth Symphony, and a heavenly contribution from the Seattle Choral Company (Fred Coleman, the Seattle Choral Company’s music director is a SYSO alum), Mahler’s Second Symphony (Resurrection Symphony) thundered across the heavens this past Sunday. Those of us who made it to Benaroya Hall for the concert knew we were in for a sonic treat when a small statured first violinist took a microphone and described Mahler’s last movement as “cool.”
Seattle is lucky to have a youth orchestra program as large, talented as the Seattle Youth Symphony. With public schools squeezing arts education and interest waning in classical music generally, youth orchestras like the SYSO could be essential to ensuring classical music doesn’t wither away like many people predict will happen.
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.
Gathering Note 