What was your last concert?

[DublinJimbo]

It seems that poor attendances at concerts featuring anything but the old reliables is a disease not limited to the UK.

Here in Dublin, our National Symphony Orchestra is currently in charge of a new artistic team (principal conductor Alan Buribayev, principal guest conductor Hannu Lintu, associate artist Finghin Collins). They are transforming the concert experience here, with the 2011-12 NSOI season especially a quite remarkably ambitious one, crammed with innovative and imaginative programming. My last concert had Hannu Lintu conducting Sibelius's 3rd Symphony and Zemlinksy's Lyric Symphony (soloists Amanda Roocroft and Wolfgang Holzmair). I guess it was the Zemlinsky that made the unadventurous shy away, as the hall was less than half full. The poor attendance was a shame, as the concert was an exhilarating one. The Sibelius was astonishing, while the Zemlinsky was fine, though let down by Amanda Roocroft's contribution).

I dread to think what the numbers will be like at the next concert on my list, the centrepiece of which will be Evelyn Glennie joining the orchestra for a performance of Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

It seems that poor attendances at concerts featuring anything but the old reliables is a disease not limited to the UK.

Here in Dublin, our National Symphony Orchestra is currently in charge of a new artistic team (principal conductor Alan Buribayev, principal guest conductor Hannu Lintu, associate artist Finghin Collins). They are transforming the concert experience here, with the 2011-12 NSOI season especially a quite remarkably ambitious one, crammed with innovative and imaginative programming. My last concert had Hannu Lintu conducting Sibelius's 3rd Symphony and Zemlinksy's Lyric Symphony (soloists Amanda Roocroft and Wolfgang Holzmair). I guess it was the Zemlinsky that made the unadventurous shy away, as the hall was less than half full. The poor attendance was a shame, as the concert was an exhilarating one. The Sibelius was astonishing, while the Zemlinsky was fine, though let down by Amanda Roocroft's contribution).

I dread to think what the numbers will be like at the next concert on my list, the centrepiece of which will be Evelyn Glennie joining the orchestra for a performance of Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich.

There's some pretty enterprising stuff going on in Dublin then - Alberich is a terrific fun piece and this sort of bold programming deserves reward.

[kuligin]

Last night Vaughan Williams 5 at the Halle/ Elder

A rapt and very beautiful performance

Smallest audience ever for an Elder concert, they do play the same programme 3 times at these opus 1 concerts, may be the VW put the usual subscribers off

Beethoven op130 tonight with the Leipzig Quartet

[Stanfordian]

I too was at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester last Wednesday for the Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 5 with the Halle under Sir Mark Elder. He is a great champion for British music. It was good that the Halle are encouraging school children to attend classical music concerts. Our audience of the future.

[Norfolk Born]

An all-Elgar programme, well-suited to a November afternoon which also happened to be Remembrance Day.
'Nimrod' arr. for string quartet
String Quartet
Salut d'Amor
Piano Quintet
Details on www.felixstowemusic.com

[Tansy]

I wonder whether concert goers might be persuaded to be more adventurous if the Gramophone and similar publications were to give more space to unfamiliar repertoire, rather than constantly searching out the next benchmark recording of works that have already got plenty of fine recordings. I once took this up with CD review and was rather disheartened to learn that the program's aim is to give the listeners a nice diet of core masterpieces, with just the occasional special session for the new or the forgotten.

[Chris Newman]

I too was at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester last Wednesday for the Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 5 with the Halle under Sir Mark Elder. He is a great champion for British music. It was good that the Halle are encouraging school children to attend classical music concerts. Our audience of the future.

If that was the night I heard on Radio 3 it was excellent and ME adopted the right tone to the schools in his introductions making them feel that they were part of the fun and as important as the dignitaries.

[Richard Tarleton]

Last night - St David's Hall,Cardiff. BBC National Orchestra of Wales performed Bruckner 7 under Kazushi Ono - a new conductor to me but Opera de Lyon, Tokyo Phil and La Monnaie apparently. He evidently knew the work quite well as he conducted without a score. Look out for it when it comes on R3, it was a tremendous performance. The codas were incandescent, the playing in all departments excellent, I've seldom heard the Wagner tuba coda better played.

It was preceded by K467 played by Francois Frederic Guy. The bits by Mozart were OK but he played cadenzas by Marc Monnet which left you wishing he hadn't - basically, smart-arse French intellectual lifting his leg on Mozart. They were truly dreadful. I shall have to listen to Geza Anda later to get over it.

[jr28893]

Mozart in Cardiff

Last night - St David's Hall,Cardiff. BBC National Orchestra of Wales performed Bruckner 7 under Kazushi Ono -

It was preceded by K467 played by Francois Frederic Guy. The bits by Mozart were OK but he played cadenzas by Marc Monnet which left you wishing he hadn't - basically, smart-arse French intellectual lifting his leg on Mozart. They were truly dreadful. I shall have to listen to Geza Anda later to get over it.

Maybe you are related? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tarlton

These Monnet cadenzas were such a breath of fresh air. Sometimes it is good to listen to music with an open mind. I think Mozart would have loved a new approach to his music. At least he had a sense of humour.

[french frank]

Last Friday, the closing recital of the Earth Music Bristol festival in St George's. The Coull Quartet played Haydn (Op 33/3 - The Bird) and Dvořák (Op. 96 - the American). Straddling the interval were Edward Cowie's Birdsong Bagatelles aka String Quartet No 5, which consisted of 24 short movements, each one representing a different bird, its habits, its habitat &c.

The Haydn and Dvořák were well played, but the centrepiece was obviously the Cowie work. He was artistic director of the festival and there had been more of his (choral) work the previous evening. He's very clearly a modernist without being avant garde. There's a "choppiness" about his writing - at least in the bird pieces which featured in this 'natural world' festival. Each is in a different key, though I was surprised that there was a key signature. The Coulls commissioned this work a few years ago but it must have been new to most of the audience who were impressively quiet and still throughout. As a new work, I was curious but I suppose I'm still searching for some idiom between Dvořák and, say, Cowie which I might find personally satisfying. Sorry I can't be more knowledgeable and insightful

It's still in the iPlayer if you're interested.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Last Thursday: Glyndebourne Touring Opera's Handel Rinaldo. Musically excellent but seriously weird visually with the action transplanted into a school with the Crusaders as boys in school uniform yet donning breastplates, gauntlets and helmets, waving swords, and riding bicycles; and the Saracens as the girls from the same (or maybe a neighbouring?) establishment. In some weird way I found it started making sense after Act 1....

Last Friday: Trio con Brio from Copenhagen in what seems to be Haydn's only pf trio (you know the one!), Shosta 2nd trio and Schubert D898. The Shosta was magnificent and the rest at least decent. I wanted rather more richness from the strings in D898 though. The pianist is a very class act, and he's not likely to change his strings since he's married to the cellist, and the violinist is her sister!

I'd be very interested to hear views of anyone else who's encountered these shows.

[Richard Tarleton]

Maybe you are related? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tarlton

These Monnet cadenzas were such a breath of fresh air. Sometimes it is good to listen to music with an open mind. I think Mozart would have loved a new approach to his music. At least he had a sense of humour.

Yes indeed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITmE8...eature=related (this isn't me by the way). One of my party pieces. It's a lovely piece, and as befits a piece in honour of a clown it's not entirely clear whether it's a lament or a jig, there being no tempo markings in the tablature.

I always listen to cadenzas, and indeed music, with an open mind. Earlier this year in Swansea I heard Victoria Mullova play the Beethoven with cadenzas by Ottavio Dantone - they were brilliant. These, IMV, clashed horribly with the concerto.

[Richard Tarleton]

These Monnet cadenzas were such a breath of fresh air. Sometimes it is good to listen to music with an open mind. I think Mozart would have loved a new approach to his music. At least he had a sense of humour.

jr, I should have added "hello and welcome" - apologies, I seldom look at "join" dates. How did you enjoy the Bruckner?

The last couple of StDH concerts I've been to there has been a good number of music students sitting at the front of the stalls, which helps to bring the rather high average age of a StDH audience down - some did not return after the interval. I wasn't sure if this is because they'd heard what they came for, or had heard enough.

I tried to find out more about M. Monnet, but his website isn't a lot of help - I don't think I'm on the right wavelength for his evidently postmodern French sense of humour.

[BBMmk2]

I am rather late to0 include this bit I must praise the work of the Ardingly College SO, who gave their utmost in a most engaging prpogramme for them. Elgar Nimrod, Peter Warlock, Capriol Suite and a Film Medley, which went down a storm! Its so gratifying seeing youngsters playing this music we love ourselves and getting rapturous reception afterwards!

[Flosshilde]

My next concert will, I hope, be the Scottish Chamber Orchestra on Friday, performing some of the cantatas in Bach's Christmas Oratorio. However, my recent cold has left me with a rather irritating ticklish cough, so I'm caught in a conundrum - should I forgo a concert I was very much looking forward to, or should I go & risk irritating people by coughing? I would of course suck Strepsils & muffle it with a handkerchief, but I would still feel somewhat uncomfortable for behaviour that I would disaprove of in others, for my own selfish enjoyment? Still, perhaps the cough will be better by Friday.