Tag Archive for ‘Haydn’
The Proms: Haitink and Perahia with the Vienna Philharmonic
Perennial spring. The Vienna Philharmonic never wants for love and respect, being showered with both almost beyond measure. Their PR department must consist of an answering machine that says, “Thanks for adoring us. Maybe we’ll call you back.” Since their principal season is spent in the opera house, the Philharmonic gives few orchestral concerts compared with the world’s other premiere ensembles. After earning raves and an audience hanging from the rafters at the Proms this summer, these august visitors were described by one London critic as “lifetime members of the high table.” It’s become de rigeur to carp about the absence of women in the orchestra (I counted three), but otherwise, a critic might as well push a macro key on his computer set to endless praise.
Gluck, Hummel and Haydn Concertos with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Keyed Trumpeter Gabriele Cassone
The first three programs of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra this year have made a nice historical progression from the late Baroque of Vivaldi, to that of central Europe and England with Bach, Zelenka and Handel, now to the late classical period. The fortepiano has come out to replace the harpsichord and the orchestra grown with thicker string sections and clarinets to bring us Haydn and the Italian trumpet virtuoso Gabriele Cassone. For the Haydn G major Symphony, the so-called “Surprise,” Paul Dyer conducts from behind the fortepiano bench, and lays chords oftentimes too while using his body and shoulders to conduct. Though we can catch at times some of the period reproduction fortepiano’s beautiful sonorities, it is too large a hall really to do it justice and often it gets swallowed in the orchestra, but no matter, that is not its purpose here, though it does make a slight difference in color. What is important is that with the larger (late) classical orchestra, the conductor is necessary and conductorly music-making is readily audible here. With more dynamic possibilities from the backed-up strings, and timpani, and opportunities to use them thanks to Haydn (not to mention Gluck!) — and Maestro Dyer (though he never gives himself the label “conductor”) does know how to use it — the orchestra adapts naturally and readily to the new-sounding late 18th century palate. The strings have more solidity, they are still clear, very precise, with guest concertmaster Madeleine Easton leading them with her beautiful playing, but with more structure, polished but with a fine texture by virtue of the gut strings and the varied shapes and sizes of the violins. The orchestra is set up with cellos on the left next to the first violins, and basses, violas and second violins on the right, horns on the back left, trumpets (natural baroque ones) on the back right with the woodwinds in between.
Tanglewood 75th Anniversary Celebration in the Music Shed, a Review
In this special version of the popular annual “Tanglewood on Parade” concert, the 75th anniversary of the festival as we know it (more or less) was duly celebrated. On August 5, 1937, the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed an all-Beethoven concert under Music Director Serge Koussevitzky. (I have already mentioned this in my review of the commemorative repreise of the same program on July 6.) This was the first concert of the Berkshire Symphonic Festival, as it was then known, both with the Boston Symphony and on the same property, Tanglewood, which has been the home of the orchestra ever since.
The Tokyo Quartet make their final appearance at the Tannery Pond Concerts with Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Debussy in Minor Keys
By now everybody knows that the renowned Tokyo String Quartet will retire at the end of the 2012-13 season. The quartet was founded in 1969 at the Juilliard School of music by graduates of the Toho School of Music in Tokyo, where the founding members had studied with Professor Hideo Saito, who left a profound mark on their approach to music. They came to New York for further study with members of the Juilliard String Quartet. Since then, as one of the first Asian performing groups to acquire an international reputation, they have not only set the example for Japanese musicians in the world at large, they have set an international standard for chamber music playing and the string quartet in particular. The extraordinary efflorescence of string quartets today doubtless owes much to their example. Their playing has been distinguished by its beauty of tone, accuracy of intonation, and precision of ensemble, but, for all this perfection, they never fail to project a fully thought-out and felt conception of the composer’s intentions and the inner content of the music. Their playing is never dry, detached, or emptily virtuosic, and I have never left one of their performances feeling they had failed to go the limit with the music at hand.
Three Last Quartets: the Emerson at Tanglewood: Haydn, Bartók, and Schubert
The Emerson Quartet has become our honored eminence grise of chamber ensembles—they have recorded much of the literature (excluding critical 20th-century repertory by Schoenberg and Carter but including the complete Shostakovich) in performances that are regarded as definitive. Their concerts have taken on the aura that I recall experiencing a generation or two ago with the Budapest and then the Guarneri Quartets. The high-mindedness of the string quartet genre performed by the ensemble known to be the best there is induces in audiences a state of meditative reverence that is sustained by beautifully polished, superbly controlled performances. There is even a moral component involved: rather than relegate one performer to a subordinate role (that of second violinists Alexander Schneider or John Dalley) the Emersons are egalitarian: Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker share first and second violin duties. Their textural preferences are for rich, even-voiced sound that easily allows the viola and cello to speak through, and the balances are almost perfectly calibrated to display the endless resourcefulness of the composers.
The Young Russian Pianist, Gleb Ivanov, triumphs in Haydn, Chopin, and Prokofiev at a Tannery Pond benefit
Another most impressive discovery of Christian Steiner’s, pianist Gleb Ivanov, a twenty-eight-year-old M.A. from the Manhattan School of Music, played a stirring program of Haydn, Chopin, and Prokofiev at a private benefit concert for Mr. Steiner’s Tannery Pond Concerts. Here was a pianist of impeccable—really formidable—technique, powerful intelligence, and marked individuality, playing with a concentration that made the audience hang on every note, putting across his point of view with full conviction. And this point of view was most definitely worth hearing—and that is an understatement. Any musician who can play with such polish, grandeur, and intelligence has my deep respect.
Music Small and Large, Boston, Fall 2009
Boston is full of excellent musicians who give concerts in various configurations of established chamber music groups, early and new music groups, and orchestras of various kinds other than the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and of course in solo recital. For musical performance and presentation of a great range of music, we are blessed in Boston. In early October I attended my first concert by the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, playing at the Goethe Institute on Beacon Street, where the large high-ceilinged double parlor makes a great venue for music, with a rich, resonant, vivid sound right to the back, though with small chairs all on one level and on this occasion a packed house, it was hard to see.
Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique at Carnegie Hall
A weekend’s concert-going, in which this splendid performance of Haydn’s choral masterpiece was followed by one of Leon Botstein’s “Classics Declassified” concerts on Beethoven’s First Symphony, created a mini-festival devoted to the fecund influence of Gottfried, the Baron van Swieten, with Johann Peter Salomon, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven in enthusiastic, if occasionally fractious attendance at both, reminding us at how closely linked London anf Vienna, the two great musical centers of the 1790′s, actually were.