Concerts: previews / reviews

[JSngry]

We have this on tap for Saturday night with the Dallas Symphony:

GEMMA NEW conducts
ZLATOMIR FUNG cello

BORODIN Polovtsian Dances
KATHERINE BALCH Cello Concerto | World Premiere
STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring

Maybe a little.. .jaded on Rite as far as on record, but not live. This is only the third time for us, so it's still a fresh experience. I've heard Gemma New conduct a few times before and it's always been fun.

Live matters!

Also very intrigued be the program notes for the world premier piece:

https://www.dallassymphony.org/productions/the-rite-of-spring/

The winner of the 2020–21 Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, Balch was nominated for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s 2020 Career Advancement Award by violinist Hilary Hahn. Balch, who earned advanced degrees in music from Yale and Columbia, is currently a visiting assistant professor of composition at the Yale School of Music. Her work has been commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the London Sinfonietta, and Ensemble Intercontemporain, among many other prominent orchestras and ensembles.

Dubbed “some kind of musical Thomas Edison” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Balch constructs distinctive sound worlds unique to each new composition. The prolific young composer engineers an eclectic but efficient sonic code, precisely calibrated to the needs of a particular project, incorporating everything from toy instruments to tuned crystal water goblets, earthenware pots, and pianos prepared according to painstakingly detailed instructions involving color-coded graphs and elaborate symbols.

In the score for Balch’s new Dallas Symphony Orchestra co-commission whisper concerto, every element of the sound is mapped to the minutest detail, right down to images of all the specific objects that she used to modify the strings of the prepared piano. She provides specific instructions for most of the other instruments, too, whether it’s col legno battuto bowing for the strings, which requires the musician to strike the strings with the wooden part of the bow normally held by the fingers, or a passage where the cello’s bow is swapped out for a bamboo chopstick. Elsewhere she calls for nontraditional variations on traditional techniques such as pizzicato or flutter tonguing. In some glorious version of an afterlife, John Cage and Henry Cowell are surely smiling.

Composed in 2022, whisper concerto is true to Balch’s style in that it sounds at once perfectly idiomatic and utterly strange. Beautiful—sometimes even conventionally tonal—melodies commune lovingly with shameless noise. Virtuosity gives way to entropy only to catch its breath and come back weirder and wilder, transformed by the volatile power of orchestral collaboration. Shards and fragments of free jazz mysteriously reassemble themselves, against all odds, into a peculiar chorale.

“The end of my concerto deals with elements of Ligeti’s noise-based cadenza, but in a different, more tonal context,” Balch explained in a recent interview with Rita Fernandes of The Strad magazine.

One challenge that she confronted while composing her cello concerto was maintaining some kind of fruitful equilibrium between the solo instrument and the orchestra. ‘The cello’s low register can be difficult to balance, and I really wanted to honor the integrity of the instrument’s tessitura,” she told Fernandes. “It’s never a battle between cello and orchestra. I want them to fit together in a way that provokes intimacy between them.”

The Composer Speaks

“whisper concerto is named after the bristling, agitato ‘whisper cadenza’ of György Ligeti’s cello concerto. Like Artifacts, my concerto for violin and orchestra, this piece is not meant as a showcase for cello alone, but for the orchestra as a whole, which reacts to and augments the soloist.

“whisper concerto is a working out of several musical contradictions I find expressively intriguing: how can an andante be agitato? A presto, dolcissimo? How can a cadenza play (and be playful) with the evolving demands and expectations of performer virtuosity? How can a simple chorale become the shadow of a desperate, fluttering, noisy scorrevole? In folding together these musical opposites, I hope to have captured some of the kinetic virtuosity of Zlatomir’s playing, for whom this concerto is dedicated, along with his kindness, playfulness, gentleness of spirit, and warmth. —Katherine Balch

Balch is but 32, so not just a living composer, but a YOUNG one at that!!! 

[JSngry]

I'd like to hear more Katherine Balch!!!! 

[mikeweil]

Monday evening I witnessed the closing ball of a workshop for baroque dance at the Frankfurt Music Academy. A six piece student ensemble excellently played a long suite composed by Jean-Marie Leclair to the baroque dance exercises and choreography taught by Niels Badenhop after the methods at the court of Louis XIV at Versailles. 

Every lover - and player! - of baroque music should at least once see and or practice this - most may have noticed terms like "Forlane" and "Passepied" as denotions of parts in Bach's orchestral suites, but never seen the respective dances. They will make you understand the music much better and show that they are an essential part of the performances of this music in baroque times. 90% of the music is related to dance rhythms and structures! For the closing Chaconne Badenhop called the audience on stage and had us all dance it à rondeau. A revelatory experience. 

Edited May 29, 2023 by mikeweil

[JSngry]

Dance music!!! 

[mikeweil]

On 5/29/2023 at 10:57 AM, mikeweil said:

We are regular visitors to the concerts at the Frankfurt music academy. Tonight we will witness the annual presentation of the classes for viola da gamba and historical double bass. 

Due to problems with train connections we couldn't make it, but two weeks later we saw the end of term presentation of the HIP class with excellent violin and oboe students.

Last week it was the general rehearsal for a performance of Händel's four Coronation Anthems, garnished with a Telemann sinfonia with three trumpets and two concerti grossi by Georg Muffat in arrangements for grand baroque orchestra. The large student choir in the Anthems had the walls of the concert hall vibrating! Best choir performance I ever heard.

Edited September 10, 2023 by mikeweil

[mikeweil]

July 16, 2023 - Baroque Night at the Frankfurt musical academy, period performance department.

(detailed review to follow - elaborate renovation work in our apartment kept me busy)

[Eric B]

I saw Jason Moran & the Bandwagon at the Vanguard a couple times during the week of Thanksgiving. The 10pm Thursday set was one of the great music-going experiences of my life. Band played with incredible intensity. Centerpiece of the set was a rendition of McCoy’s “Fly With The Wind” that went HARD. 

[HutchFan]

14 minutes ago, Eric B said:

I saw Jason Moran & the Bandwagon at the Vanguard a couple times during the week of Thanksgiving. The 10pm Thursday set was one of the great music-going experiences of my life. Band played with incredible intensity. Centerpiece of the set was a rendition of McCoy’s “Fly With The Wind” that went HARD. 

That sounds fantastic.  Wish I could've been there to hear it!