What was your last concert?

[Richard Tarleton]

I learned from my mistake a few weeks back when I was too late booking for Winterreise and found myself in a 'Limited View' seat behind a pillar. I could see Paul Lewis but Mark Padmore was hidden for the entire concert.

For tonight I've splurged out on a central stalls seat for Schwanengesang which I'm not familiar with. What's the best way to approach the work(s)? Other than having a vaguely valedictory theme, I'm not sure what to expect. Does it come over as individual songs or can one construct a narrative?

As Mischa Donat says in his sleeve note to the Mathias Goerne/Brendel version (coupled with Beethoven An Die Ferne Geliebt - recommended) it is highly unlikely that Schubert intended them to form a single entity. The last, Die Taubenpost, was thrown in by his publisher who also added the title.

Andras Schiff said there is more drama in Der Doppelganger than in an entire Wagner opera. Make of that what you will!

[french frank]

The last, Die Taubenpost, was thrown in by his publisher who also added the title.

Andras Schiff said there is more drama in Der Doppelganger than in an entire Wagner opera. Make of that what you will!

That's very interesting. I found Mark Padmore's notes on Schwanengesang. He said of Die Taubenpost: "To be touched and moved by this song is, I think to get to the essence of Schubert ... No matter how many times I sing it, I feel blessed and immeasurably grateful to the most loved and most lovable of composers."

Having heard - and watched - him perform Der Doppelgänger tonight, you could sense his spirits lifting when the introduction to Die Taubenpost started up. No wonder he feels gratitude: I think if he had to finish the performance with Der Doppelgänger he'd feel like going out and hanging himself - he put so much emotion into it.

[First half was Beethoven, ending with An die ferne Geliebte.]

Brilliant performance from MP and Paul Lewis.

[Dave2002]

Not sure that we shouldn't also have "what was your last opera?" and "what was your last ballet?" threads.

Last night, Holland Park, Lucia di Lammermoor. Wacky plot, but music and production good. Lucia particularly good, apart from one or two high notes, which were perhaps intended to represent screams and anguish. Odd to hear a live performance with what I assume was a glass harmonica.

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/curtain-up/2011/nov/15/glass-harmonica-lucia-di-lammermoors-american-conn/

I couldn't see whether the Holland Park player used an instrument similar to the one in the article above.

[Richard Tarleton]

Not sure that we shouldn't also have "what was your last opera?" and "what was your last ballet?" threads.

Last night, Holland Park, Lucia di Lammermoor. Wacky plot, but music and production good.

I'm not sure it is all that wacky, dave - forced marriage, and related murder, is quite topical right now...

[aeolium]

Not sure that we shouldn't also have "what was your last opera?" and "what was your last ballet?" threads.

'Last opera' is usually in the 'Night at the Opera" thread on the Performance board, Dave2002. Not sure about 'last ballet'.

My last concert was to see John Lill at Malvern, in a recital of Mozart, Brahms (Handel variations), Chopin and Schumann, with the slow movement of Beethoven Pathetique as an encore. He was also due to give a masterclass straight afterwards but I was unable to stay for that. They were very fine performances, though I think Lill seems happier playing the central Romantic repertoire (and Beethoven) - he is someone who brings out the drama in a work and also has an overview of the whole.

Next concert at the Cheltenham Festival next month.

[verismissimo]

My next is VPO/Rattle playing Brahms 3/Webern/Schumann 3 at Symphony Hall in Brum, Saturday.

[rauschwerk]

I'm having a kind of Bartokfest at Aldeburgh this week. Last Saturday I went to hear the Keller Quartet in the third and fourth quartets and excerpts from The Art of Fugue. In my early twenties I was quite obsessed with the Bartok quartets but had never heard these two works live until now. They were wonderfully played and the performances deserved greater ovations than they actually got. I didn't have my programme book with me so didn't know which Bach pieces were being played, but was rather pleased to spot the canon in augmentation and contrary motion (wondering how the heck any musician could write such a thing and make it sound like real music!) It says a great deal for the quality of the performances that my attention was held throughout in spite of the desperately uncomfortable pews in Aldeburgh Church.

Last night, a wonderfully varied programme conducted by Oliver Knussen at Snape. We had:-

Birtwistle's Cantus Iambeus of which I can say only that, just as I was beginning to wonder where it was going, it stopped quite abruptly.

Bartok's Village Scenes of 1926, from his most uncompromising period (same as the the quartets mentioned above). Splendidly sung by eight members of Exaudi. The last one was a bit like The Miraculous Mandarin but with a folk tune added. Very enjoyable.

Ives's Fourth of July. It will always be a mystery to me why anyone would want to perform or listen to this piece, it's such an impenetrable and quite deafening racket. Fortunately it's short.

Elliott Carter's Interventions (soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard). I enjoyed this, partly because the musical language seemed rather like late Roberto Gerhard, whose music I love. I'd like to hear another live performance.

Knussen's Requiem - Songs for Sue, written in memory of his wife. Poems by Emily Dickinson, Machado, Auden and Rilke. Dawn Upshaw sang beautifully and passionately.

Finally, Ives's Three Places in New England, my favourite by this composer. Excellently played by the CBSO, though I'd like to have been a bit further back than row 3 in that hall to hear more detail in Putnam's Camp.

[DublinJimbo]

If anyone had told me ten years ago that I'd go the concert I went to last night, I would have laughed outright, but go I did, to hear the Colin Currie Group in a complete performance (i.e. with full repeats) of Steve Reich's Drumming in the National Concert Hall in Dublin.

A terrific experience, received with rapturous enthusiasm by the audience (and I even joined in the standing ovation). Some of the performers were in Hourican's pub afterwards, which gave me an opportunity to shake some hands and thank them (the performers, not the hands) in person.

[rauschwerk]

Last night at Snape Maltings: two pieces by Bartok. The first was his Piano Quintet of 1903-4 which very nearly became his Op.1. A curious piece which (as Malcolm Gillies wrote in the programme notes) "unfolds an ungainly stylistic mix from which Bartok was almost immediately in retreat." Tamara Stefanovich played with the piano lid fully open and quite often overpowered the Keller Quartet.

After the interval a real masterpiece, the Sonata for two pianos and percussion of 1938. I have loved this work for many years but this was the first time I heard it in concert. It was given a superb performance by Ms Stefanovich and Pierre-Laurent Aimard, with percussionists Daniel Ciampolini and Sam Walton. This quite rightly received an ovation.

[rauschwerk]

Yesterday teatime, in Aldeburgh: a piano recital by Tamara Stefanovich which replicated the programme given by Bartok in Aldeburgh in 1923. It was given in the parish church hall, which is thought to be the building in which Bartok performed (though it was on a different site then). We had three Scarlatti sonatas, Debussy's Pour le piano and the rest was by Bartok. Apart from the Allegro barbaro (an old party piece of mine) and the Romanian Folk Dances of 1915 it was all new to me. I found it a most satisfying recital for the idiomatic playing (and some well judged body language in A bit tipsy)and was not bothered by one or two klinkers. The piano, which took up the entire stage, made a very big sound in such a small hall, and no wonder that a member of the 1923 audience reportedly found the composer's playing to be "very vigorous".

I was most interested to see that Ms Stefanovich played everything from the dots, even the pieces which I would take to be standard repertoire. But then Bartok used to do the same and was criticised for it in the USA.

This concluded an excellent week at the Aldeburgh Festival, of which the highlight was the sonata last Wednesday (see my previous post).

[amateur51]

Thanks for the reports from your Bartokfest, rauschwerk - you have had a good week by the sounds of it

[aeolium]

Last night to David Fanshawe's African Sanctus at the Cheltenham Music Festival, with Gavin Carr conducting the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, Cheltenham & Tewkesbury Youth Choirs, Backbeat Percussion Quartet and Maureen Brathwaite. I hadn't heard this work since the 1970s but it is an amazing piece to see in performance, an extraordinary and original fusion of different musical and cultural traditions. I thought it was tremendous.

Following that, hurrying in the pouring rain to see the Imperial War Museum's restored film of the Battle of the Ancre from 1917, with a very interesting introduction about the film by someone from the IWM, and the original medley piano score played by John Sweeney. It was a very powerful documentary testament with, to us, incongruously upbeat music (there were snatches from Schubert's Rosamunde, and something in a Mozartian style accompanying an artillery assault on the German trenches ).

Altogether, a fascinating evening and all credit to Meurig Bowen who has devised imo a wonderful programme for this year's festival.

[teamsaint]

And more prosaically
Southampton University SO.

Tchaikovsky March Slav
Some rimsky Korsakov overture.
Sibelius. Valse Triste
DSCH Festival overture.

Sibelius 2 for a main course.
A real lunchtime treat !!

[french frank]

Oxford Philomusica, Choir of New College, Oxford, Edward Higginbottom


TELEMANN Concerto for Trumpets, Oboes and Strings in D major
BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major
TELEMANN Concerto for Flute, Oboe d’amore, Viola d’amore and Strings in E major
BACH Magnificat in D major, BWV 243

In Bath Abbey. Magnificent (especially the Magnificat)

[Nick Armstrong]

Oxford Philomusica, Choir of New College, Oxford, Edward Higginbottom


TELEMANN Concerto for Trumpets, Oboes and Strings in D major
BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major
TELEMANN Concerto for Flute, Oboe d’amore, Viola d’amore and Strings in E major
BACH Magnificat in D major, BWV 243

In Bath Abbey. Magnificent (especially the Magnificat)

Wonderful looking concert and what a venue!