Photo of the day: Mischa Elman
Mischa Elman, violinist, (1891-1967). Library of Congress.
Below, Elman plays Dvorak’s “Humoresque”, deliciously. Recording 1910.
Dudamel, LA Phil, Josefowicz perform Brahms and Mackey
In today’s Orange County Register online, I review Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in performances of pieces by Brahms and Steven Mackey, with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and violinist Leila Josefowicz. Click here to read my review, or pick up a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper.
photo: courtesy of l.a. phil
Video: Nathan Milstein plays Paganini’s Caprice No. 5
Nathan Milstein plays Paganini’s Caprice No. 5 … in a single take.
Music critic debuts as narrator in ‘Sinfonia Antarctica’
Chris Russell rehearses the Orange County High School of the Arts Symphony Orchestra Friday afternoon in St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach
This was the hardest part:
Ye ice falls! Ye that from the mountain’s brow/ Adown enormous ravines slope amain –/ Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,/ And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!/ Motionless torrents! Silent cataracts!
Getting my mouth around those words by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which preface the third movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica, getting the tone and accents and pauses right, proved to be more difficult than I had imagined. Speaking into a microphone and hearing my voice resonate into the large room we were to perform in threw me off as well. I messed up the passage a couple of times during the dress rehearsal Friday afternoon. My friend, conductor Christopher Russell, didn’t seem to mind, and the musicians in the Orange County High School of the Arts Symphony Orchestra didn’t laugh at me, at least not that I could tell. We all had a lot on our plates, the Sinfonia Antarctica not an easy thing to get together.
Chris put the orchestra through a grueling rehearsal, the first the orchestra had had with the pipe organ, narrator and wind sounds (electronically produced). The solo soprano (Hillary Place, fantastic) sang from a balcony to the side of the sanctuary; the women’s chorus sat directly behind the orchestra. Chris told me that the orchestra was one or two rehearsals short of what they’d normally have before a concert. He had plenty to settle with his young musicians.
The music of Spain, with dancing girls
In today’s Orange County Register online (and later in the Ipad and print editions), I review the Pacific Symphony’s program devoted to the music of Spain. CLICK HERE TO READ MY REVIEW.
Rarities in Orange County this month
The next couple of weeks will see performances of two works the likes of which have rarely, if ever, been heard behind the Orange Curtain.
On Friday, May 6, the Orange County High School of the Arts Symphony Orchestra and conductor Christopher Russell (winners of ASCAP’s award for adventurous programming) pull out the big, frosty guns of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 7, otherwise known as the “Sinfonia Antarctica,” or, as I like to call it, “La Mer on Ice.” Mr. Russell informs me that he’ll have the pipe organ, that the wind-machine sounds will be recreated electronically, and that he’ll perform the version, seldom ventured, mit Sprecher. Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson famously served as narrators in recordings of the work. While this Orange County performance cannot boast such stellar awesomeness in the person of said narrator, he’ll do in a pinch. (Click here or on the thumbnail photo of the poster above to see who it is!)
Then, on May 18, courtesy of Long Beach Opera, Shostakovich’s satirical operetta on Soviet-era housing shortages and bureaucracy, “Moscow, Cherry Town” (“Moscow, Cheryomushki,” Op. 105), comes to the Irvine Barclay Theatre, fully staged in an English language version. Isabel Milenski, the daughter of the company’s founder and the brilliant mind behind its production of Handel’s “Semele” (set in a “Dallas”-like Texas) a few years ago, directs.
On their way to Carnegie Hall, Ian Bostridge, Les Violons du Roy, stop by Segerstrom Concert Hall
In today’s Orange County Register online, I review tenor Ian Bostridge and Les Violons du Roy in a performance at Segerstrom Concert Hall. Here’s an excerpt.
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How much Baroque music can you take? I have to admit that my own limit is something less than an entire concert’s worth. Perhaps it’s a character flaw.
At any rate, the Canadian chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy, lead by its music director Bernard Labadie, rolled into town Friday night on the first stop of a tour that will wind its way to Carnegie Hall. The program went for Baroque, gobs of it. The instrumental excursions were enlivened by the presence of the English tenor Ian Bostridge, who sang a series of arias both known and obscure.
***
Click here to read the whole thing, or pick up a copy of Monday’s dead tree edition.
Photo of the day: Otto Klemperer
Conductor Otto Klemperer. No date. Library of Congress.
Below, Klemperer conducts the New Philharmonia Orchestra in Mozart’s Overture to “Cosi fan Tutte,” 1971.
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