Edinburgh Festival Queen's Hall concerts

[pastoralguy]

This Edinburgh Festival has been terrific and it still has a week to go.

We went to the second Takacs quartet yesterday and were lucky enough to get tickets for the very front row of the stalls so we were about 8 feet away from the players! To hear these guys so close up was amazing with the Barber 'adagio' sounding quite overwhelming. It made me realise that a recording, even with first class equipment, is still a poor substitute for the real thing.

The concert started with the leader talking briefly about the Janacek 'Kreutzer Sonata' quartet and explained the connection between Beethoven's masterpiece and the way Janacek used it in his piece. I'm never very keen on players talking about works since it's so difficult to pitch the right level but I think he got it spot on this time.

After the interval, the Beethoven op. 132 was sublime with an extremely quiet audience. Just wonderful...

[doversoul1]

Anne Sofie von Otter and Friends: Monday 25th

Swedish soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, violinist Daniel hope, pianist Bengt Forsberg and Bebe Risenfors on accordion, double bass and guitar perform songs and instrumental music composed or performed in Terezin concentration camp north of Prague.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04f8n6m

Swedish soprano Anne Sofie von Otter… honestly

That besides, this looks an intriguing programme.

[Ockeghem's Razor]

Swedish soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, violinist Daniel hope, pianist Bengt Forsberg and Bebe Risenfors on accordion, double bass and guitar perform songs and instrumental music composed or performed in Terezin concentration camp north of Prague.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04f8n6m

Swedish soprano Anne Sofie von Otter… honestly

That besides, this looks an intriguing programme.

It was fascinating and moving and informative, I felt. It may just be a coincidence rather than planning but the next programme, the Proms Chamber Music concert, ended with Strauss's 'Metamorphosen' arranged for septet and that, for me, maintained the mood and thoughts inspired by the Terezin material.

[bluestateprommer]

From catching up with last week's EIF Queen's Hall broadcasts on iPlayer:
1. Michael Houstoun: OK, but not quite up to the level of other concerts in this series. MH had some scrambled moments at times.
2. Simon Keenlyside and Malcolm Martineau: more of a return to form by comparison, quite fine recital. Interesting division into 'opposing sides', after a fashion, with British selections in one half and German-language lieder in the other.
3. Renaud Capuçon and friends: again, very fine recital, although the Korngold works are a bit prolix for their own good. Mildly amusing that they worked in Webern at his most accessible (i.e. no 12-tone austerity), the more interesting as I'm reading Hans Moldenhauer's book on Webern now.
4. Takács Quartet: very good, with perhaps some momentary mild pullings about of tempi here and there, but still with exemplary musicianship.

Forum calendar is updated with links to R3 iPlayer pages for each EIF concert, and full recital details updated for the lieder performances.

[pastoralguy]

And now, it's all over...

IMHO, it's been an extremely good Festival this year with some outstanding performers and performances. Mrs. PG and I went to about 20 'events' and there was not a single occasion that we left the concert hall/theatre feeling that what we had seen was not special.

Highlights? Well, all of it really, be it Blyth Duff and Sofie Grabol in the 'James Plays', the Tackas Quartet playing Beethoven, Janacek and Smetana, the BBCSSO under Runnicles in the Planets, the Czech Philharmonic in Martinu, Franz Peter Zimmerman playing the first 4 Beethoven violin sonatas or Pietre Anderszewski cast a spell in Bach.

And it was great to meet some of the performers too! Mrs. PG was thrilled to meet Blyth Duff, I met Mariss Jansens, Leonidas Kavakos, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Sir Andrew Davis, Erin Wall, Nicola Benedetti, Jiri Belhoclavek, the four members of the Tackas Quartet, the leader and 'cellist (and their baby daughter!) of the Pavel Haas quartet and, last but not least, Sean Rafferty!

So, all in all, a great Edinburgh International Festival. Only 49 weeks until the 2015 EIF...

[bluestateprommer]

Swedish [mezzo-]soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, violinist Daniel hope, pianist Bengt Forsberg and Bebe Risenfors on accordion, double bass and guitar perform songs and instrumental music composed or performed in Terezin concentration camp north of Prague.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04f8n6m

....this looks an intriguing programme.

From listening to it on iPlayer, this was indeed an intriguing program. It came with real-time live spoken quick program notes from ASvO, DH, and BF in their turns. It's admittedly difficult, if not impossible, to hear the music without putting out of one's head the known eventual fate of all the composers in the death camps, excepting the one who survived the war, and to judge the music on its own merits without the terrible extenuating circumstances. Having said that, all the performers did the music proud. Maybe ASvO was a bit arch and mannered at times, if not up to the Bostridge-level scale that's the favorite stylistic whipping-boy of the moment, but her commitment was clear. All the music was good, although I'm not sure about "great", but the focus on shorter works clearly biases the picture, with the exception of the larger-scale selections by Schulhoff (whose music is almost always worth a rediscovery on its own).

The Scottish Ensemble performance was a fine concert. The obvious "novelty" was the new Gareth Farr work for mezzo and strings, which was in a very tonal and audience-friendly idiom. The main modest quibble was that the slow movement of the Tippett may have slackened the pulse a bit much for my taste.

Very good recital from Stephane Degout and Simon Lepper, including two encores, with a drolly snarky introduction by SD to the Poulenc encore, to the effect of the contrast between a German song writer and a French song writer in reacting to a lost love, where the German mopes and wants to renounce the world, the French says 'let's go outside and have a smoke'.

Catching up with the Pavel Haas Quartet recital now. Fine, fine work in the Schulhoff and DSCH quartets, and good stuff in the Brahms as well. It was charming to hear the slightly morphed English word coinage of one of the quartet members speaking about the Brahms, where he spoke of Brahms being "inspirated" in his composition.

[Blotto]

Maybe ASvO was a bit arch and mannered at times, if not up to the Bostridge-level scale

I like the idea of concert audiences being rated on the Bostridge Scale.

Unlike the Beaufort, a '0' on the Bostridge would indicate disastrous conditions ('smoke rises vertically'). The other ratings, though, would remain unchanged so that a 12 would be very bad, indeed ("Debris and unsecured objects are hurled about").

English visitors to Edinburgh concerts in years to come may need a Bostridge rating a few days in advance to know if any concerts are quite safe.

[Serial_Apologist]

Unlike the Beaufort, a '0' on the Bostridge would indicate disastrous conditions ('smoke rises vertically').

What in that case would indicate good conditions? "Bostridge sucks"?

[bluestateprommer]

Quick PS on the Pavel Haas Quartet EIF concert: they gave a somewhat rough-and-ready, but still enjoyable, encore of the finale from Dvorak's "American" Quartet. Finally, got to the surefire crowd-pleaser of the whole bunch, the all-Beethoven recital by Frank Peter Zimmermann and Christian Zacharias, fine work indeed, complete with two encores (one by Beethoven, the other not, from the FAE Sonata). FPZ is one of today's artists whom I've not yet had the pleasure of hearing live yet, so this (besides recordings) would have to be the next best thing.

[pastoralguy]

I was there and thought it was a marvellous concert. FPZ and CZ really made these works come alive for me. Such imaginative interpretations and a glorious sound. The whole hall really was enraptured.