What was your last concert?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You're just trying to make me jealous.

- it would have been lovely to have heard your opinion on the performance, Alpie.

[ferryman]

Saint Matthew Passion performed at the Stiftskirche in Stuttgart on Good Friday....

Excellent performance in the evangelist role, his articulation was very clear, but the soprano, alto and bass were sometimes vague.

Being downstairs meant that visibility was limited, but it was wonderful to be in such a special venue to hear this work.

I took along the pamphlet from the 1962 Klemperer/Philharmonia recording to guide me through ☺️

[Bryn]

Ute Kanngiesser and John Tilbury last Sunday evening. The Cafe OTO environs very much part of the performances. Less noise from the bar area than usual, but plenty from surrounding venues. There were two works performed. Prior to both playing The Tiger's Mind, Nightpiece, John Tilbury played Cardew's Sitting in the Dark (The Musical Times, 109/1501 (1968), 233–34).

[Bryn]

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji: Opus Clavichembalisticum (Jonathan Powell at Roslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel last night). Still recovering from this glorious barnstorming performance. If you can get to next Saturday's performance in Oxford, do.

[gurnemanz]

Two excellent song recitals in the last week: Bob Dylan at Bournemouth last Thursday, Véronique Gens at the Wigmore on Monday lunchtime.

[Beef Oven!]

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji: Opus Clavichembalisticum (Jonathan Powell at Roslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel last night). Still recovering from this glorious barnstorming performance. If you can get to next Saturday's performance in Oxford, do.

I’m glad that you enjoyed it. I wish you a speedy recovery!

I have had some physiotherapy and I’m no longer using crutches (well, for short distances - need them for anything more than 50 metres) and the pain has subsided, so I may risk the drive to Oxford on Saturday. It’s an easy drive from London, but I’d have to stop at least once. Can’t be sitting in a car too long.

I really hope that I’m not speaking too soon/tempting providence.

Were any other forumistas there? Was Alistair there?

[Bryn]

I’m glad that you enjoyed it. I wish you a speedy recovery!

I have had some physiotherapy and I’m no longer using crutches (well, for short distances - need them for anything more than 50 metres) and the pain has subsided, so I may risk the drive to Oxford on Saturday. It’s an easy drive from London, but I’d have to stop at least once. Can’t be sitting in a car too long.

I really hope that I’m not speaking too soon/tempting providence.

Were any other forumistas there? Was Alistair there?

No Alistair, as he indicated earlier in the Sorabji thread. There were certainly other contributors to R3ok present on Tuesday evening. IIRC, Alistair plans to attend on Saturday.

[Beef Oven!]

No Alistair, as he indicated earlier in the Sorabji thread. There were certainly other contributors to R3ok present on Tuesday evening. IIRC, Alistair plans to attend on Saturday.

I think he’s giving a talk or something similar on Saturday.

[cloughie]

Two excellent song recitals in the last week: Bob Dylan at Bournemouth last Thursday, Véronique Gens at the Wigmore on Monday lunchtime.

Was Bob singing his own great songs or murdering what has become known to some as the American Songbook?

[gurnemanz]

Bob was, unlike the last time we saw him, in good voice, with a nice selection of old, new and standards. link

[Pulcinella]

Saturday, 13th May, 2017 - 7:30pm

York Guildhall Orchestra
Conductor: Simon Wright

Blackford - Concert Overture “Cruachan” (World Premiere)
Wagner - Lohengrin, Prelude to Act 1
Lauren Leigh - Motto (World Premiere)
Elgar - Sea Pictures:
soloist - Louise Winter
Poulenc - Les Biches
Elgar - Pomp & Circumstance March No.1
Trad arr. Henry Wood - Fantasia on British Sea Songs
Arne arr. Malcolm Sargent - Rule Britannia
Parry arr. Elgar - Jerusalem

Although not feeling either hopeful or glorious, I went along to swell the numbers in the chorus, thereby getting a free (if acoustically not ideal) ticket!
As usual the brass were too loud in rehearsal (and I suspect in the concert), but I have it on good authority from a fellow chorus member who is also a tuba player that, for a brass player, pp means pretty powerful and mp means mega powerful; perhaps BBM could confirm this.

(He declined to tell me what ff stood for!)

[Bryn]

Tuesday late afternoon: Samuel Beckett's Worstward Ho (John Tilbury's recorded voice, electronics, and playing the excellent Fazioli in the Rymer Auditorium at York University. This was Tilbury's latest version of his approach to the text and was preceded by an introductory seminar which I managed to miss, due to a vehicle fire halting traffic on the A64.

Time: 15:04 Location: A64 Eastbound carriageway, Tadcaster

Crews from Tadcaster, and Acomb attended a Hyundai car on fire on the dual carriageway. The car suffered 100% fire damage, fire crews used 1 hose and breathing apparatus to extinguish the blaze. The cause of the fire is believed to be the overfilling of oil.

from http://www.northyorksfire.gov.uk/new...shift_16th_may

Fortunately, the seminar was recorded and a copy will be made available to me.

Good eating at the Barbacan Polish restaurant after the performance. Strangely they had no unflavoured vodka (nor unflavoured Tequila, come to that). Apparently the lack of the former may be down to politics, plain vodka being associated with the 'communist' era.

[Dave2002]

Sacconi Festival, Folkestone

Enescu: String Octet
Shostakovich: Two pieces for string octet, Op 11
Mendelssohn: Octet

Sacconi Quartet and the Wihan Quartet

The Enescu piece was splendid - never heard it before. Recommended. Try it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugv_o2XsJoE - though this doesn't sound as full or complex as in the live performance.

I also went to the harp event later on Saturday, and the final concert on Sunday with slightly more conventional fare (Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak), but very good nevertheless.

http://sacconi.com/events/2017.html

[aeolium]

Dave2002, I heard the Sacconi Quartet at the Gower festival some years back. They played the Mendelssohn Octet then too, though on that occasion with the Navarra Quartet.

Last Friday, I went to the first of the Carducci Quartet's concerts in this year's Highnam Festival in Gloucestershire, the programme being Beethoven's op 95 quartet, Schubert's G major piano sonata D894 and Schumann's piano quintet, Martin Roscoe being the pianist for the last two items.

Roscoe is a pianist who has been rather under my radar until quite recently. His recordings, apart from a Beethoven cycle which he undertook quite recently, are mostly of repertoire off the beaten track, e.g. Dohnanyi and Szymanowski piano music. On the evidence of last Friday he is a wonderful solo and chamber pianist, bringing out the poetry, drama and humour of the Schubert sonata, which I have never heard live before, and proving a sensitive accompanist in the Schumann. Although I have heard the Schumann quintet many times, it seemed almost as though I was hearing it for the first time because of hearing it live - it forces you to concentrate and listen to every detail. It's an amazing work, the first composed for piano and string quartet, if one discounts the very different quintets of Boccherini and the chamber arrangements of Mozart piano concertos, and it makes one wonder which works might have had an influence on it - Mozart's E flat piano quartet, or Schubert's E flat piano trio perhaps. Anyway, it was given an excellent performance by Roscoe and the Carduccis and I shall certainly be looking out for them for other concerts or broadcasts.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Martin Roscoe is indeed a fine pianist - I first encountered his work when he regularly worked with a (pre-Tchaikovsky Prize-winning) Peter Donohoe.