What was your last concert?

[Nick Armstrong]

Great to read that, richard. Having heard Kozhukin live, I suspect his brand of muscled precision was pretty spot on for the Ravel.

Funnily enough, I've always found Igor's Card Games to be one of my favourite pieces by him (Abbado's LSO recording was one of my earliest treasured cassettes in the early 80s).

[richardfinegold]

Great to read that, richard. Having heard Kozhukin live, I suspect his brand of muscled precision was pretty spot on for the Ravel.

Funnily enough, I've always found Igor's Card Games to be one of my favourite pieces by him (Abbado's LSO recording was one of my earliest treasured cassettes in the early 80s).

Well, I regret missing the Stravinsky, it has been a while.
btw, barring any unforseen mishaps in the next month, I do plan to travel to the UK next month. We should PM to coordinate our pub encounter.

[Roehre]

Berg/Cerha's Lulu, Nationale Opera/Concertgebouw orchestra/Zagroszek, June 1st in Amsterdam
(Coproduction with the Met and ENO).

Musically and theatrically excellent. Staging very to the point 1930s with projected etchings as background.

Highly recommended

[Nick Armstrong]

btw, barring any unforseen mishaps in the next month, I do plan to travel to the UK next month. We should PM to coordinate our pub encounter.

[teamsaint]

Ludovic Morlot, c
Denis Kozhukhin,p

Last night was my first outing since my heart surgery 3 weeks ago. We attended a CSO Concert of Ravel, Gershwin and Stravinsky. My wife and private duty nurse decided I was looking peaked at the interval and we left. imo the Concert was very lopsided, with the best pieces on the first half of the program, so I decided to humor her. Morlot is a French Conductor who has been getting very positive press here with the Seattle Symphony; he seemed to have great rapport with the Orchestra as there was a lot of smiling by the players. I had never heard of the Soloist but he had a cute pony tail that he would swing like a horsetail to great effect.
The first item was Gershwin, An American In Paris. (By coincidence, someone had sent us a "movie basket" filled with old movies and snacks to watch during my convalescence, and one of them was the Gene Kelly movie of the same name. And one of my Doctors, an old friend, had just seen the new Broadway Musical derived from the movie in New York and we spent most of my visit discussing that). I remember the first time I had seen this in Concert, when I was in Medical School in Detroit, and perhaps because of the city's automobile heritage, there were real auto horns used in the concert. No auto horns last night, but the CSO brass did an admirable imitation. The highlight for me was when one of Robert Chen's fine violin solos was answered by an extended riff from the Tuba,including a brief improvised cadenza that I don't think is in the score but which Gershwin surely would have countenanced. A real crowd pleaser, and the
Audience showed it.
Next up was the Ravel Left Hand Concerto. Morlot painted a great introduction, with those double basses providing a backdrop for the Piano that made it seem as though it was emerging from Middle Earth. Mr. Pony Tail played very dramatically. Besides whipping his hair around for effect, he also used his right arm to brace himself on the Piano, clearly a luxury that the original soloist couldn't enjoy.
The items we missed were the Stravinsky Card Game Piece and Ravel's La Valse. I've never liked the Stravinsky--it always sounds like a pastiche that he dashed off to get a paycheck--but since I have changed my mind about more than one piece of music after hearing a live performance, I regret missing it.
I've heard La Valse more times than I can remember and don't miss it. Once one absorbs the party trick of Strauss Tales Of the Vienna Woods mutatating into Invasion of the Body Snatchers, there doesn't seem to be much of a point.

Its great to be reading your review, RFG.

Thanks for posting.

[Richard Tarleton]

I was hoping to be reporting on Natalie Clein playing solo Bach at Rhosygilwen today. Instead, we were rear-ended on a narrow country road a mile from the venue, and went home on a breakdown truck. Nobody hurt.

[Nick Armstrong]

This was one of those events (yes, in my "top five" concerts, too) when hyperbole is inadequate!

Ferney, Beefy:

http://bachtrack.com/fr_FR/review-trifonov-ashkenazy-philharmonia-may-2015

[Beef Oven!]

Ferney, Beefy:

http://bachtrack.com/fr_FR/review-tr...monia-may-2015

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[Bryn]

... Funnily enough, I've always found Igor's Card Games to be one of my favourite pieces by him (Abbado's LSO recording was one of my earliest treasured cassettes in the early 80s).

Surely the composer's work which shows his magpie tendency to a greater, and more wide-ranging, degree than any other? None the worse for it, either.

[HighlandDougie]

Could have posted about Aurora Ensemble/Nicholas Collon in the Wigmore Hall on Tuesday (pretty damn good) or the ROH William Tell but have been most knocked out by

Steve Reich: Different Trains

Quattro MP4

Brussels Conservatoire - part of their series of lunchtime concerts throughout the summer. Love the work anyway but quite bowled over by the performance by this young quartet. "Clapping Music" as an encore. There has to be a future for classical music when young musicians can play with such passion and skill.

[Bryn]

Howard Skempton and Notes Inégales at Club Inégales last night. A taste from a previous meeting:

[Demetrius]

In the last few weeks, I ended my concert season with 2 solid performances by the Gewandhaus orchestra (one with Dennis Russell Davies, one with Jiří Bělohlávek) and a stellar one by the MDR SO and Kristjan Järvi:

Sibelius Karelia Suite
Selim Palmgren Piano Concerto No 1
--
Gene Pritsker 40 Changing Orbits
Stravinsky Petrushka


The Karelia Suite seems to be a bit of a signature piece and provided (despite a few errant clappers ) a more than decent start. I'm not comfortable with piano concertos in general (with very few exceptions) and this one was no exception; not the fault of the orchestra or the soloist (though possibly the composition itself was a little bit lacklustre). The second half, however, was absolutely brilliant. Petrushka is a piece that fits Järvi's very active, enthusiastic style perfectly. The thread about standing ovations suggested that audiences are giving out these like free candy recently, but here people usually only get up during applause to make a run for the last train. After the encore, the whole hall was standing, something I haven't witnessed in any concert up to date. Part of this is likely to acknowledge that Järvi is staying on for at least three more years, as he is highly popular with the audience (and, seemingly, with the orchestra).
He likes to pick modern (in the sense of recent, though not necessarily Avantgarde) as well as unknown pieces, which to me is a huge plus. The next MDR SO season features pieces by Niels Gade, FA Hoffmeister, Berio, Roberto Sierra, Franz Schmidt, Carlos Chavez, Kantscheli, Steve Reich, Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma .... alongside Mahler, Bruckner and Beethoven.
So much to explore

This season, I picked 9 concerts each by Gewandhaus and MDR SO. My top three were all with Järvi.

[LeMartinPecheur]

I've just (Friday night) reached the end of five days' magic from the Dante Quartet at their eponymous E Cornwall festival.

Plenty of solid quartets and quintets but they also use the festival's opportunity to do stuff that isn't easy to programme as a quartet. So we had a number of string trios for various combinations: Haydn for 2 vln & cello (arrangements of trios for 2 flutes & cello from his London period, completely unknown fare for me); Dohnanyi Serenade and Mozart Divertimento K563 for vln, vla, cello; Kodaly Serenade for 2 vlns and viola. Most spectacularly, an evening of solo strings, Krysia Ostostowicz in the Bartok sonata for solo violin, Richard Jenkinson absolutely superb in the Kodaly solo cello sonata plus goor supporting acts from Oscar Perks (Paganini and Wieniawski caprices) and Yoko Inoue (vla) in the 1st JSB cello suite elevated to G major.

Put in a genuine Hungarian folk band showing the professionals how to play vla and db 'properly' - viola held hard against chest with soundboard vertical giving, ahem, rather unusually clear up-and down-bows, bass with player standing by its RH side thus creating a push-pull bowing action that often made it resemble a tuned drum, a vital driver to the rhythms. Plus a member playing the tarogato, a kind of Hungarian folk clarinet. But we were told it was originally a double-reed instrument, while my music dictionary says it was a kind of wooden cornett used for military signalling. Take your pick??

This Hungarian folk input helped the quartet and the festival audience to deeper understanding of the folk influences in Bartok (solo sonata and 4th quartet), Kodaly and Dohnanyi. And just possibly in Kurtag's 12 Microludes(?). Fascinating pieces but blink and you miss them - Kurtag makes late Webern sound garrulous The end of the festival was the Op79 quintet by adoptive Hungarian J Brahms and earlier we'd had Haydn Op 76/3, Mozart duo K424 and quintet K515, Beethoven (Op95).

So a very high-protein musical diet over 5 days, to set alongside all the festival meals and cream teas

Next year's festival starts we understand on Mon 11 July

[Nick Armstrong]

RFH, 23 Sept, LPO - Jurowski: Mahler 7

Sensational - kaleidoscopic, phantasmagoric, sweeping and swirling, glamorous and glittering.

I liked it!