What was your last concert?

[Simon B]

A fairly stunning RLPO concert at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, with Daniil Trifonov playing Rachmaninov 4; Vassily Petrenko conducted Prokofiev 5 and Jeu de Cartes.

Not technically my last concert (and not only because I, er, just happened to end up in Liverpool for the repeat the next night) but the last to be something sufficiently out of the ordinary to motivate comment.

On the infrequent occasions the Rach PC #4 comes up it usually self-explains the rarity of its performances relative to #2 or #3. However, in Trifonov's hands, well... Perhaps that is one way to describe what it is that distinguishes a few such performers - the ability to captivate with works usually perceived as not quite the finest. The Prokofiev was predictably blistering from the RLPO/Petrenko team too.

Rather surprising to see a relatively sparsely populated Symphony Hall with Trifonov on the bill - no such problems in Liverpool. I get the impression he could programme an evening of Slovenian stoat-herding music with his favourite nose flute and bodhran collaborators and it would sell out immediately in London, but such are the vagaries of these things...

[EnemyoftheStoat]

It is, indeed, Stoatfoe:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08dnr53

Aka Erminemesis.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[makropulos]

Frank Martin's Le Vin herbé at WNO on Thursday night in Cardiff, then the Binchois Consort (singing English music, 1400–1520) in Nottingham on Saturday. A rewarding weekend.

[Zucchini]

Not technically my last concert (and not only because I, er, just happened to end up in Liverpool for the repeat the next night} ...

You are Daniil Trifonov (or Lobby Ludd) and I claim my £5

[Pulcinella]

Free lunchtime concert today, in St Helen's Church, York

A Spanish Sojourn: Songs from the Siglo de Oro
Performed by two members of Musicke in the Ayre:
Marie Lemaire (soprano)
Din Ghani (vihuela, lute, and baroque guitar)

Thanks to the forum member who alerted me to this (free: retiring collection) lunchtime recital, which introduced me to music I did not know and an instrument I have probably never seen before too!
A little disrupted by people coming and going, and by half-term noises (including a competing busker!) outside, but a very pleasant way to spend an hour.
But the chain came off my bike on the way home!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A lunchtime freebie for me, too, today - Clarinet Trios by Brahms, Muczynski, and Rota, played by Elizabeth Jordan, Heather Bills, and Daniel Gordon in the Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall in the University of Leeds. The Brahms is one of my favourite pieces by one of my favourite composers, and it was very well played by the ensemble (the 'cellist had a few intonation issues in the higher register - but also many moments where she got it just right) - soppy twit that I am, the very first note of the second movement brought a lump to my throat. Pulled myself together - but it is such a lovely work.

I had mistakenly expected the Muczynski to be a work by Brahms' friend, Eusebius Mandyczewski when I saw the programme advertised - Robert Muczynski (1929 - 2010) was in fact an American composer - from Chicago, to be precise. His Fantasy Trio is an engaging and enjoyable piece, sounding something written in the 1940s with influences between Bartok, Messiaen, and Martinu - it was, in fact, written in 1969. The pianist Daniel Gordon's arrangement of one of Brahms' late organ works (a very convincing arrangement - but rather too short; I hope he does at least a couple more to go with it) and the Finale from Rota's Clarinet Trio completed the performance - one of those "earworm" tunes, that kept modulating all over the place - very enjoyable.

No bike chain problems here - Shanks' Pony took me to ZAAP Thai restaurant, and then on to the Grand Theatre for Opera North's production of Rimsky-Korsakoff's Snow Maiden.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Matthias Goerne and Markus Hinterhäuser at t' Wigmore Hall

Eisler and Mahler, including Der Abschied.

Gobsmacked.

(And it was a freebie )

[kuligin]

Arcadia Quartet RNCM Manchester 27 February

Haydn op 33/5

Bartok 3

Beethoven op59/2

encore finale Haydn op 20/2

A quartet I had not heard of, but a really top class performance, particularly in the Bartok, but then they hail from Cluj which remains a city with a large Hungarian population. Best concert this season at the MCMS.

[HighlandDougie]

LPO/RFH this evening in Gavin Bryars and Steve Reich. The GB (Sinking of the Titanic; Jesus' Blood) went down a storm with those in the audience who knew what was coming. Bryars newbies looked a little perplexed. The Sinking of the Titanic has lost none of its impact; not quite so sure about Jesus' Blood. It does rather go on a bit. The Reich was a tour de force on the part of the musicians and fully deserved the spontaneous standing ovation from pretty much everyone there. I'm completely biased as I think that Music for 18 Musicians is, to use the cliche, a real masterpiece. Exhilarating and with a strong emotional impact, I'm still buzzing from having heard it. Almost full hall, too. Good on the LPO!

[Pulcinella]

Tonight, Early Music Centre, York

Micklegate Singers
Conductor: Nicholas Carter

Finzi: Seven poems of Robert Bridges
Elgar: The shower
RVW: Full fathom five
Barber: To be sung on the water
Toch: Geographical fugue
Whitacre: Water night
Ešenvalds: Rivers of light
McLeish: The negro speaks of rivers

[bluestateprommer]

Last Saturday, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra at Copley Symphony Hall, my first time ever hearing this orchestra and visiting their hall, being in SD for a business trip. This was the program, with Jahja Ling in the twilight of his San Diego SO tenure. The orchestra numbered 33 for the Haydn concerto, with divided violins and double basses and cellos on the left, between the 1st violins and violas. The orchestra's principal cello, Yao Zhao, did a fine job in the Haydn, with just one or two fractional slips. The orchestra had a fairly 'rich' sound, i.e. little evidence of HIPP-ness in the timbre. The audience was not full, at least upstairs, but applause was enthusiastic and very supportive of YZ, with some whoops and hollers.

The orchestra almost tripled to 90 or so musicians for Bruckner 8. Like the Haydn concerto, AB 8 hadn't been performed by the San Diego SO in over 3 decades. So this choice was obviously a labor of love for Jahja Ling, and certainly not for box office. Ling paced the work well, even if, in all honesty, he couldn't overcome my own personal general lack of affinity for AB's symphonies. Ling placed the trumpets and trombones stage left/house right, with the percussionists in the back stage right corner and the four horns who doubled on Wagner tubas just to their left. The remaining 5 horns were in a line across the stage, in front of the timpanist, who really went to town with his part and very rightly got a solo bow. The two harps were stage left in front of the trumpets/trombones.

[teamsaint]

Dulcinea String Quartet
Judith Weir - String Quartet
Mendelssohn - String Quartet No.2 in A minor, Op.13
The Carne Trust series

Managed to catch this at lunchtime today at St James, Piccadilly, and what a treat the music was.

The acoustic of the church seemed to work well for the Weir quartet, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Plenty to make one think and I'll certainly have another listen to a recording. Plenty of interesting textures, rounded off by a thoughtful use of the 2nd Violin and Viola to carry the main melodic interest together in the final movement. Prior to this, most of the interest for me was in the forceful but irregular rhythms of cello line . At least they sounded irregular, but there may well be a pattern/patters that I missed on first listen.

The work seemed well matched with the Mendelssohn. There was something that linked them, but it escapes me for now. Anyhow, nothing like a live performance to bring out the genius in a piece by one of the greats, and what a work the Mendelssohn is. Absolutely astonishing creativity from an 18 year old. It just has idea after idea bursting out, combined with that wonderful melodic gift. Played with great enthusiasm and obvious enjoyment by this young professional ( I think) ensemble, who struggled much more with the muddy acoustic in this ,than in the Weir.
Decent lunchtime crowd of a couple of hundred had fought their way through the street food stalls to enjoy a terrific hours music, and had a glorious spring afternoon to go back out to enjoy.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Orchestra of Opera North
conducted by Adrian Leaper

Leeds Town Hall, Saturday, 1st April, 2017

Some initial disappointment that the orchestra's Music Director, the excellent Straussian, Aleksandar Markavic was "indisposed" and Leaper (whom I'd "known" to be a fine, competent conductor) had replaced him late in the hour. Sibelius' Tapiola sort-of gave what I was expecting from him: the superb orchestra played magnificently (a couple of not-quite-ensemble ensemble aside) and there were several insights into this magnificent score arising from scrupulous attention to the details of the score - but the violins could (?"should"?) give more intensity in their screeching high passages after the storm, and (perhaps) more resonance and less "brightness" from the brass in the final plagal cadence. A sort-of 7/10 performance of a 12/10 work - maybe lacking a couple of extra rehearsals? Some superb string playing elsewhere - and astonishing Timp work from the fantastic Paul Philbert.

Bruch's Scottish Fantasy isn't a work I have ever really taken to - in recordings by Chung, Accardo, and Heifetz I've always found it a dull piece. So I wasn't expecting much, and was therefore somewhat surprised to find myself greatly enjoying four or five moments in the piece. Jack Lieback was the (astonishingly good) soloist - near-impeccable (the lovely bit with the flute solo in the "Second Movement" began very well, but then he turned it into a race when they're supposed to play in unison - he won), even if playing from Music!!! (And some unattractive gurning - "I raise my eyes to the heavens ... thus!") A 9/10 performance of a 4/10 work.

But as if to cut me down to size for thinking during the interval how much I'd've liked to have heard the Sibelius with this orchestra led by a first-rate conductor (Ashkenazy kept coming to mind), Leaper came into his own and proved himself worthy of the great orchestra he'd found himself leading. Strauss' Alpine Symphony was astonishing! Kept in vigorous pace, without ever sounding hurried (the performance took a smidgen under 50 minutes) with excellent control of the overall structure, and captivating attention to detail, this was the first time I've ever heard the work Live (as it was with the other two works, for that matter) and I cannot imagine it being done very much better - and certainly not by any other living conductor. The summit wrung tears of joy and delight (this orchestra has been responsible for more of my blubbing at concerts than any other), the storm nearly had me cheering (Paul Philbert and his several colleagues making sound tactile, without ever obscuring the rest of the orchestra). To be picky-mean-spirited, there were a couple of moments of sour intonation from the clarinets towards the end of the work - but this merely reminded me that it was a Live event, with real people, exhausted from their total commitment to the Music.

Great, treasurable evening - hugely appreciated by the audience. What there was of it - the Stalls seats were only about a third full! (The cheapest seats behind the orchestra were full - and the orchestra made sure that they gave that section their own bow - couldn't see upstairs.) And a complete transformation of my opinion of Mr Leaper.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

You're just trying to make me jealous.