What was your last concert?

[HighlandDougie]

Bruckner: Te Deum; Symphony No 9

Sally Matthews (soprano); Karen Cargill (mezzo-soprano); Eric Cutler (tenor); Alessandro Spina (bass)
London Symphony Chorus (Simon Halsey chorus director)/London Symphony Orchestra/Bernard Haitink

Although I very much hope that it will not be the case, I suspect that this might have been my final experience of Haitink in the flesh. The 'Te Deum' suffered more from the Barbican's acoustic than the symphony but not disastrously so. Nothing to say about Haitink's Bruckner 9th that hasn't been said more eloquently by others - but it somehow all seems right. I know that Petrushka, among others, has commented elsewhere on the LSO, "not being the VPO", but the LSO played with such conviction for a conductor whom they clearly venerate, especially in the adagio, that it never crossed my mind to think about any such comparison (and, in any case, I don't much like my Bruckner sleek and burnished). I left profoundly moved by the experience.

[Serial_Apologist]

We could all really do with another Hanns Eisler right now

Said by Mary King to me after last night's A Gala Concert celebrating Daryl Runswick's 70th Birthday at Cadogan Hall*.

Discuss???

(*See under Jazz thread for my review).

[Bryn]

Said by Mary King to me after last night's A Gala Concert celebrating Daryl Runswick's 70th Birthday at Cadogan Hall*.

Discuss???

(*See under Jazz thread for my review).

We might possibly have had one who would recently have turned 81, but for the fact he was killed by a hit and run drive some 35 or so years ago.

[Serial_Apologist]

We might possibly have had one who would recently have turned 81, but for the fact he was killed by a hit and run drive some 35 or so years ago.

Yes, I happened to mention Cornelius in this connection.

[Richard Barrett]

Said by Mary King to me after last night's A Gala Concert celebrating Daryl Runswick's 70th Birthday at Cadogan Hall*.

Discuss???

What would "another Hanns Eisler" be doing?

[Serial_Apologist]

What would "another Hanns Eisler" be doing?

I've been trying to think up an answer to this question all day.

[HighlandDougie]

Two nights spent in Cologne en route from Scotland to France:

Essener Philharmoniker/Tomáš Netopil in Mozart (Horn Concerto No 1), Schumann (Konzerstück for Four Horns) and Dvořák (8th Symphony) - in the Essen Philharmonie

Benjamin Grosvenor in his current recital programme - Schumann, Mozart, Beethoven ('Moonlight'), Granados, Scriabin (2nd Sonata) and Liszt, plus short encores by Moszkowski and Kapustin - in the Kölner Philharmonie

When the Germans decide that they want a concert hall, they certainly go for it in a big way. Wonderful acoustics in both, loads of circulation space, decent food and drink, reasonable ticket prices. And a very fine orchestra in Essen (the Dvořák 8th was a terrific performance).

BG - whom I have now seen five times in as many years - just gets better and better. He's been performing this programme for some time but he didn't seem in the least tired of it. The Scriabin was a thing of wonder (I hope that he adds the other sonatas in due course). The Liszt - Rhapsodie Espagnole S.254, R.90 - lots of notes but not terribly much music - was a tour de force but one which I think that I might happily never hear again.

[teamsaint]

Two nights spent in Cologne en route from Scotland to France:

Essener Philharmoniker/Tomáš Netopil in Mozart (Horn Concerto No 1), Schumann (Konzerstück for Four Horns) and Dvořák (8th Symphony) - in the Essen Philharmonie

Benjamin Grosvenor in his current recital programme - Schumann, Mozart, Beethoven ('Moonlight'), Granados, Scriabin (2nd Sonata) and Liszt, plus short encores by Moszkowski and Kapustin - in the Kölner Philharmonie

When the Germans decide that they want a concert hall, they certainly go for it in a big way. Wonderful acoustics in both, loads of circulation space, decent food and drink, reasonable ticket prices. And a very fine orchestra in Essen (the Dvořák 8th was a terrific performance).

BG - whom I have now seen five times in as many years - just gets better and better. He's been performing this programme for some time but he didn't seem in the least tired of it. The Scriabin was a thing of wonder (I hope that he adds the other sonatas in due course). The Liszt - Rhapsodie Espagnole S.254, R.90 - lots of notes but not terribly much music - was a tour de force but one which I think that I might happily never hear again.

That all sounds great fun, HD. What was it we discussing from Essen/ Netopil recently ?
I'll look it up and edit !!
edit: it was Asreal, of course. Now that would have been worth hearing live.....

My last concert was the Skids in Southampton last night. One of my all time favourite bands,I'll post a few thoughts if anybody is remotely interested.

Suffice to say for now, a terrific gig in a really good little venue.

[rauschwerk]

Two Aldeburgh Festival concerts in the last seven days.

First, the unlikely combination of Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio (Trio Isimsiz) and Stravinsky's Petrushka (CBSO/Ms Unpronounceable from Lithuania). I didn't know what to expect of the former piece (new to me), since Hanslick's absurd critique about its excessive length had lodged itself in my mind. In the event, I enjoyed it a great deal in this superb performance.

Our seats were ideal for chamber music, but I'd like to have been further back for Petrushka. I'm not sure if the Maltings is right for big orchestral pieces. Brilliantly conducted and played, but the boomy sound seemed all wrong for Stravinsky.

Vox Luminis on Tuesday. Mostly Tudor music and Purcell: a lot of slow music, including Funeral Sentences by Morley and Purcell, but beautifully sung. Two Britten pieces (Hymn to the Virgin + Sacred and Profane). I am hardly familiar with the latter piece, but it sounded like a top notch performance of a really challenging cycle. I think the singers had learned it specially for this gig: Lionel Meunier spoke afterwards to say he was about to enjoy the most delicious G&T he'd ever tasted!

[BBMmk2]

I should have posted this earlier but I was actually playing in the end of term concert at the school where I work last Friday. Yes, playing! All my colleagues were very keen seeing me back. which was great, plus students as well. I am not officially back yet though.

[teamsaint]

Philharmonia Orchestra
David Hill conductor
Raphael Wallfisch cello
Sally Matthews soprano
Roderick Williams baritone
The Bach Choir
Repertoire
James MacMillan: Blow the trumpet in the new moon(World premiere)
Elgar: Cello Concerto
Interval
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No.1 (A Sea Symphony)

There was a promise of both quantity and quality in this late season programme at the RFH last night.
There was a reasonable turnout, in what is a very large hall, on a slightly muggy midsummer evening on the fun side of the Thames.
The MacMillan piece had been commissioned for the choir, and it sounded like a piece commissioned for a good choir. Plenty of athletic moves to give them a great workout, and some slick twists and turns during this paean to the joys of singing, ( I think ), but the whole lacked cohesion, or any real purpose other than to be fun to sing, to my ears. But perhaps that was enough. Nobody got hurt.
The Concerto was quite a number of leagues higher of course. Wallfisch made beautiful sounds throughout, and the whole thing felt both a touch restrained while tightly rhythmical. Not too many grand gestures here, much more a sense of agitated contemplation of the state of the world, than of rage at it . Very enjoyable, but I was in the balcony for this, and a little power is surely lost there.
I suppose it was the symphony that most had come to hear though, given that the Elgar gets so many performances.
Hard really to do justice to a fine performance of such an epic work , in a few lines. The soloists must have been a big draw, they certainly were for me. Williams was, unsurprisingly, close to perfection. I ,like many, would walk quite a long way to hear him sing. ( 13955 paces for me yesterday, although some was between work appointments ). What a gorgeous noise he makes, and how well he lets that noise express. I was looking forward to hearing local girl ( well local to me) Sally Matthews sing. I felt in the upper registers, and at volume, the vibrato was a little over powering, but at lower registers and volumes she was excellent, and I like her singing a great deal.
Hearing this live for the first time in about 40 years, you realise what a tough work this is to pull off. A huge and superb choir, an excellent orchestra and two fine soloists ( and an organ) to blend,in a hall where the acoustic has its critics. In general I felt that the orchestra needed reining in a little, and that some of the subtlety of the choral singing was lost. But, this could be down to a particular vantage point from my second half seat at the front of the rear stalls. It wasn’t to a fault, and there was an enormous amount to enjoy in the performances. It may well have blended perfectly at the podium, and perfection in this is probably too much to ask in any case . David Hill was genuinely exhausted at the end, I’ve seen professional footballers ( too many actually) less red and perspiring at the end of a performance. But it’s a massive job, and he got an awful lot out of his performers.
But in the end, because of the excellence on show, you just end up in awe of this extraordinary, groundbreaking work. So often , and never more than tonight, I sit there thinking what it must have been like to be at the premiere of a piece of music like this. On a night when nobody had ever really heard the like, and a new musical star was born. ( Probably wasn’t like that, but we can imagine).The vision, and powerful creativity that produced such an innovative and enduring work is a thing of wonder. And that creative power was done full justice last night. And I’m sure that the Bach choir loved every moment, because it sounded like that.

[Pulcinella]

Great review, ts.
Sounds like a good time eas hsd by all, even if not absolute perfection achieved.

The choirs I sang with in Oxfordshire were lucky to get Roddy as solist in a few concerts (in his early Fagiolini days); happy memories!

[teamsaint]

Lucky indeed Pulcers. yes, an excellent time had all round I'd say, except for the lady violinist who left in a hurry during the final movement,clearly feeling unwell.

Just to mention, as I do try to ( ever since I got told off by JLW ) Sally's frock. Sky ( or sea, I suppose) blue, with a very glittery top half . Nice.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Apartment House; Wolff and Cage. Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, Leeds; 1/7/17

The World Premier of Christian Wolff's Resistance "for ten or more players and a pianist", paired with the similarly scored Concert for Piano & Orchestra; pianist Philip Thomas joined ensemble Apartment House, conducted by Jack Sheen.

The Wolff was a fascinating piece - a series of Musical events featuring a variety of compositional determinacy ranging from the precisely-notated to the merest suggestion of what the performer is required to do - and with some of the material synchronised between groups of instruments, to independent soloistic lines. The 45 minute work didn't falter for a moment - and whilst with this single performance I mainly got a feeling of the play between the different textures, I also felt that there was a general atmosphere of gentle retrospection. Almost as if - if Ferneyhough's Incipits is a series of beginnings - the work was a series of Codas. It wasn't as simple as that - there were also moments of energetic activity, and humour; and some really beautiful sounds - at one point, most of the performers put aside their regular instruments, and either whistle or take up Ocarinas and Swanee Whistles for a haunting "Chorale" which managed to be simultaneously poignant and very funny. Some astonishing synchronization between the players - at one point, the piano and saxophone have a particularly tricky passage in rhythmic unison, with silences of differing duration between: the two players got this spot on, a truly virtuoso moment of super-human precision. The piece seemed much shorter than the time it took to perform, and I'd love to hear it again. (It's coming down to Café Oto next week - with luck, R3 will be recording it for a future H&N.

The only other time I've heard the Cage work, it was at the Proms a few years ago, in a performance that took about twenty minutes. Tonight, we were given a fifty-five minute version - and, again, not a moment was wasted. If the Wolff had the feeling of a series of discrete events (a similar feeling to a set of variations, say) the Cage felt much more of a long, single line, taking on the different characters it presented.

Special praise for the Bassoon and Saxophone players for substituting at the last minute for an indisposed Christian Forshaw (that duet with the piano was done after at most two rehearsals!) - and to conductor Jack Sheen, who enacted Cage's aerobic choreography unremittingly for the whole near-hour. (And, I think to the Double Bassist, who seemed to have chosen the Frank Rehak option for the Cage! But a terrific event from everyone involved.

[Bryn]

The World Premier of Christian Wolff's Resistance "for ten or more players and a pianist", paired with the similarly scored Concert for Piano & Orchestra; pianist Philip Thomas joined ensemble Apartment House, conducted by Jack Sheen.

The Wolff was a fascinating piece - a series of Musical events featuring a variety of compositional determinacy ranging from the precisely-notated to the merest suggestion of what the performer is required to do - and with some of the material synchronised between groups of instruments, to independent soloistic lines. The 45 minute work didn't falter for a moment - and whilst with this single performance I mainly got a feeling of the play between the different textures, I also felt that there was a general atmosphere of gentle retrospection. Almost as if - if Ferneyhough's Incipits is a series of beginnings - the work was a series of Codas. It wasn't as simple as that - there were also moments of energetic activity, and humour; and some really beautiful sounds - at one point, most of the performers put aside their regular instruments, and either whistle or take up Ocarinas and Swanee Whistles for a haunting "Chorale" which managed to be simultaneously poignant and very funny. Some astonishing synchronization between the players - at one point, the piano and saxophone have a particularly tricky passage in rhythmic unison, with silences of differing duration between: the two players got this spot on, a truly virtuoso moment of super-human precision. The piece seemed much shorter than the time it took to perform, and I'd love to hear it again. (It's coming down to Café Oto next week - with luck, R3 will be recording it for a future H&N. ...

Not Cafe OTO but St. John at Hackney Church next Thursday. I have real doubts I can make it, but will try.