February 16th, 2013: Love Stories

This was a Valentines day themed concert (performed on February 14th and 16th) consisting of Fauré's suite from Pelléas et Mélisande, Mozart's 21st Piano Concerto, Szymanowski's Symphony No. 4 for Piano and Orchestra and selections from the Carmen suites by Bizet.

I had bought Orchestra F seats for the concert, intending to use my seating upgrade coupon to get into the Founders Tier on the day of the concert. We ended up sitting in the third box on the right side, in moveable chairs. This is the first time I've observed a concert from the movable chairs. They're actually quite comfortable.

I was a little bit tired during the first half of the concert, so I'm not sure how much of my experience was affected by that, and how much was due to the playing of the orchestra, but I felt that the orchestra wasn't quite up to the task of the Fauré and the Mozart. The Fauré was beautiful, but particularly in the last movement (the death of Mélisande) it didn't come across to me as gut-wrenching and beautiful as I feel it should have. It seemed like a good performance, nothing more. 

However, there was an entertaining moment when Efe Baltacigil's cello slipped. The peg slipped forward on the stage, and he had to catch his cello quickly before it slid further. He didn't really miss any notes because it was a pizzicato section, so he was able to keep plucking away until a rest, and then he re-adjusted his cello and firmly dug the peg into the stage.

After the Fauré, Cédric Tiberghien came out to perform the Mozart concerto. He came waltzing out with his young face held high, and his head tilted quite considerably to the left for some reason. It was actually so extreme that I thought he may have accidentally injured his neck backstage before coming on.

Anyways, they began the concerto, and I felt the same way about the orchestra as I did during the Fauré. They just didn't seem that into it. It felt like Mozart's music was there on the stage, but they weren't delivering it to us in the audience. Tiberghien's playing was lovely, very expressive and musical in a subtle way, but it did not resonate on a deep level. He seemed to be in the same place the orchestra was about the music. But remember, I was quite tired by this point, so perhaps it was me. During intermission we went to the Friends Lounge, and I had half a cup of black tea with the hopes that the caffeine would make me more alert during the second half.

Either the caffeine worked, or the orchestra was in much better spirits after intermission, because their playing seemed more crisp, vivid and engaging, even in the Szymanowski, which is a questionable piece of music. Tiberghien came out again after intermission to play it, again angled as though one of the violinists had a rope tied around his head and was trying to drag him off to the side. I don't know why his head was completely sideways while he walked on stage. It was weird. It was even a little sideways while he bowed too, but not while he played.

Regardless, compared to the first half, I was more taken in by the sound of the orchestra and Tiberghien's playing, which all seemed to have a greater clarity, unity and projection to them compared to the pieces in the first half of the program.

Something I should mention before I continue is that Walter Gray had his hair pulled back and tied yesterday evening, contrasting the previous week where his head looked like the Tree of Tule. I wonder if he read my blog. *Insert Twilight Zone theme*

After the Szymanowski, Morlot came out one last time to conduct his own compilation of the Suites from Carmen. The applause was still fading away when he viciously gestured to the orchestra to begin the prelude, and the string tremolos cut like razor blades into the air, giving the distinct impression that this was a completely different orchestra than what we had just heard for the other works. The playing was extremely powerful and captivating, and it now seemed even weirder that I barely had a clear memory of the Fauré or Mozart. They just seemed to fade away, average performances that blend and disappear into the backdrop of great performances that the works have enjoyed over the centuries. But the Bizet was different, even more so than the Szymanowski. It sounded like the orchestra was fully awake and excited for the first time. Perhaps this is all attributable to my tiredness in the first half, or perhaps the orchestra was just not that enthused by Fauré or Mozart that evening.

In any case, the various movements of the Carmen suites rang out into Benaroya hall with enthused exuberance, and the last crashing chord of the last movement triggered enthusiastic applause and a partial standing ovation.

I should note that interestingly, hardly anybody stood up for Tiberghien after the Mozart. More people stood up for the Szymanowski, and then even more for the Bizet. So perhaps my observations are valid, independent of the fact that I wasn't as alert as I could have been during the first half.

The next concert I have tickets for is on March 2nd. Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 1 plus other works by Mozart!

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http://www.seattlesymphony.org/symphony/buy/single/production.aspx?id=12280&src=t&dateid=12280

February 9th, 2013: Brahms' 4th Symphony

This was a concert I was looking forward to for a long time, as it was almost entirely great romantic music, with only one contemporary piece right at the beginning of the program. The program consisted of Elliott Carter's "Instances," which he composed for Ludovic Morlot, Brahms' 4th Symphony, Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, and Rossini's William Tell Overture. The concert was played in that order, which was reminiscent of early 20th-century programming where the major work would go on the first half of the program and the evening would end with an upbeat overture of some kind. This is actually quite interesting, because it is actually better to end with the serious work; in a sense, ending with an upbeat overture is to say that the evening has to end with a cheesy bang to matter what. The more modern development of opening with the overture and closing with the major work is more sophisticated I would say, so I'm glad to see that such a development was made throughout the course of the 20th century.

Unfortunately my girlfriend Christine (my regular date to concerts) was tied up with work last night, so I took my dad instead. The first two seats on the right side of the Founders Tier opened up Friday night (U-1 and U-2) so I was able to exchange into those Saturday afternoon as soon as the phone lines opened. My dad really enjoyed the concert, and found it to be a wonderful collection of great music.

Elliott Carter's "Instances" was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. He wrote it at 103, and I had read that it has a more youthful flare to it than some of his earlier works, and that it's semi-digestible relative to other contemporary music, so I expected something not too painful to listen to. For an eight minute piece, it was amusing enough. Any longer and it would have gotten obnoxious.

Once that was over, they reset the stage for the Brahms Symphony. They had the second violins sitting across from the first violins, and then the violas to the left of the first violins and the cellos to the right of the second violins. The way it all came together, the cellist Walter Gray ended up sitting smack in the center of all the strings (which also seemed packed unusually close together), with his giant curly grey hair sticking out above everyone else.

Morlot led the orchestra in a very solid performance of the Brahms symphony. The tone was clear and present throughout, and the musicality of the strings in particular was quite engaging. I did realize though, throughout the course of the piece, that this symphony is not one of my particular favorite pieces of music. While sitting there I was thinking that it seemed like a very good performance, and yet I wasn't riveted. I then remembered that I've never been particularly riveted listening to recordings of it either, so that put to rest fears of the orchestra's performance being the culprit in my enjoyment of it. There's something about a Brahms symphony that's hard to explain. It's clearly fantastic, brilliant, beautiful music, but personally it lacks something for me. Perhaps its because he was a classicist who was writing classically oriented music within a romantic framework (or romantically oriented music within a classical framework?). In that sense, we lose both pure romanticism and pure classicism in his music.

The most memorable event of intermission was hearing the english horn player on stage practicing a passage from Richard Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung, the fourth opera in his Ring Cycle. I imagine there's a good chance that this will be the same player who will perform it with the Seattle Opera in August, but still, that's a bit early to be practicing it, no?

After intermission, Nicholas Angelich came on stage to perform Schumann's Piano Concerto. He was about twenty years older than his photo in the program, which my dad found very amusing. But when he sat down at the piano and the piece began, I really felt that Schumann is definitely a greater composer than Brahms. Schumann's music seems more emotionally intense to me, and it speaks more directly with unapologetically beautiful gestures, phrases and harmonies. I felt that Angelich's sound was a bit on the harsher side, but I don't know very much about this particular concerto, or about Angelich, or about the piano being used, so I couldn't say why it may have sounded that way or whether it was intentional. He exercised a very solid hand over the keys though, and it was a powerful performance.

I think it was when Morlot came on stage to conduct the Rossini at the end of the evening that my dad expressed a very funny observation of him, which I felt was right on. He said something like "he's like a little elf. He comes springing on stage, with really light footsteps, and he's really short." I was incredibly amused by this, and it's quite true. He comes bouncing out, smiling, on the balls of his feet, with that tuft of hair slightly untamed on his head.

The Rossini overture begins with the cello section alone. Efe Baltacigil, the principal cellist, opened the overture with a solo line, and was soon accompanied by the rest of the cello section. As usual, his playing was incredible, and when other cellists began to take over the solo line, the difference in tone quality and expressiveness was undeniable. It was like having red and blue placed before you and being asked "can you see a difference?" Baltacigil would play part of a solo line, and when it would get traded over to another player, it almost sounded like going from a teacher to a student. A good student, but relative to Baltacigil a student nonetheless.

The evening ended with a bang (the end of the William Tell overture), and then my dad and I spent a few minutes checking out different seating locations on the tier to see what it would be like to sit a little further back. Admittedly we would have been able to see Angelich's face better if we had been sitting a box or two back, and we would have also had a more full-on view of the orchestra. But sitting right at the front puts you practically on the stage, very close to the musicians, which feels amazing, and it also allows you to see much more of the conductor's face than you can from anywhere else. So it's a toss-up I guess.

Anyways, next up is "Love Stories" on Saturday, February 16th, featuring Fauré, Mozart, Szymanowski and Bizet!

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http://www.seattlesymphony.org/symphony/buy/single/production.aspx?id=12301&src=t&dateid=12301