Midori goes Modern

It’s always nice when superstar musicians take up the cause of contemporary music. They give it a chance that it wouldn’t otherwise have to reach a wider public and new ears. What’s more, said public, theoretically at least, will approach the music more sympathetically, the logic being that if said superstar is playing it, the music couldn’t be all that bad. A win-win situation.

On the first leg of a mini recital tour dedicated to thorny things and winding up at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall later this month, the violinist Midori stopped by Samueli Theater in Costa Mesa Wednesday night. She lives just up the road in Los Angeles, of course, and teaches at USC. A sizable, but not sold-out audience showed up to hear her. The Philharmonic Society of Orange County presented the event as part of its season-long Japan/OC festival (in collaboration with Carnegie).

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March 10, 2011

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Dudamel, LA Phil, perform Bruckner in O.C.

In today’s Orange County Register online, I review Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in their performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, Saturday at Segerstrom Concert Hall. Here’s an excerpt:

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It took a while, but it finally happened. Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic made their way to Orange County together for the first time Saturday afternoon. A sold-out crowd greeted them at Segerstrom Concert Hall, despite the summer weather and the sophisticated, even challenging program.

The main order of business was Anton Bruckner’s gargantuan and magisterial and perhaps long-winded Symphony No. 7 in E. A pair of miniatures – Anton Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 10, and Toru Takemitsu’s Requiem for Strings – served as preliminary. Not a lot of toes were tapping at this concert.

Click here to read the whole thing

P.S. There’s quite a lot of photos of the concert in the slide show when you follow the link.

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March 6, 2011

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Vienna Philharmonic performs Mahler’s 6th in O.C.

In today’s Orange County Register online, I review the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Semyon Bychkov, who performed Mahler’s cheerful Sixth Symphony in town last night. Here’s an excerpt:

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Members of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra were in two places, continents apart, Thursday. One contingent was in Vienna, performing waltzes for the annual Opera Ball, a high society event that made news this year with the attendance, by invitation from a quirky millionaire, of Ruby, an 18-year-old Moroccan girl at the center of a sex scandal surrounding Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The other contingent, constituted as the Vienna Philharmonic, performed in Orange County for the first time in nine years. Under the direction of the Russian-American conductor Semyon Bychkov, the Philharmonikers had no time for nonsense, glitzy, scandalous or otherwise. A single piece rested on their music stands – Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in A minor, nicknamed the “Tragic.” There would be no intermission, no encore, and certainly no dancing.

Click here to read the whole thing

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March 4, 2011

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Cal State Fullerton’s 2011 New Music Festival

Cal State Fullerton’s 2011 New Music Festival: “Strings in the 21st Festival” is upon us, and artistic director Pamela Madsen has put together an impressive lineup. Missy Mazzoli is composer-in-residence. The JACK Quartet launches the event on March 2 with music by Ligeti, Wolfe, Mazzoli and others. eighth blackbird performs music by Ades, Glass, Hartke and others on March 3. Violinist/composer Cornelius Dufallo and composer Paola Prestini pair up for a concert on March 4. The CSUF New Music Ensemble’s blowout on Saturday night features works by Xenakis, Crumb, Mazzoli and more. That concert ends with Rzewski’s teeming “Les Mouton des Panurge,” which was strangely botched under the composer’s direction at last year’s festival. Sunday’s concert will feature a new work by Madsen, performed by the University Symphony Orchestra, coupled with the Arctic images of Camille Seaman. Click here for details.

photo: jack quartet by stephen poff

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March 1, 2011

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Muti explains conducting

The video above is making the rounds. (We’ll give our hat tip to Sounds and Fury.) In it, the conductor Riccardo Muti, with tongue firmly in cheek, explains the art of conducting. Then, at the end, he brushes it all aside and says something terribly poetic and inspiring.

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March 1, 2011

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Letters in response to a Bruckner review

The following are letters I’ve received (e-mails, actually) in response to my review of a performance of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony by Carl St.Clair and the Pacific Symphony on Thursday. Names and cities are withheld to protect the innocent. One wishes this kind of lively conversation could go on in the comments section of my newspaper’s website, but most of these respondents are print readers, so it doesn’t. (The last letter comes from a reader who was listening to Saturday night’s radio broadcast). Here they are:

(UPDATED with more letters.)

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I hope this finds you well and happy.  I just finished reading your review of the PSO’s performance of Bruckner’s Ninth.  I have 5 of his symphonies, 3rd-5th, 7th and 9th, with the 9th being my favorite (I can’t describe to you why I like this one the most, at least not as you might describe it in one of you reviews, but I’m always disappointed that he Bruckner wasn’t able to finish it).  It’s disappointing that Carl and the PSO didn’t do this composition justice (yes, I know they’re officially the Pacific Symphony and not the PSO, but that’s how I remember them).  If you’re ever in my neighborhood (near Columbus, Ohio), you can stop by my house where we can have a glass of wine while we listen to this piece; Reference Recordings RR-81CD (in HDCD) by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and the Minnesota Orchestra.

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February 27, 2011

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Bruckner’s Ninth unwound

In today’s Orange County Register online, I review the Pacific Symphony’s performance of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, presented with a considerable educational component. Here’s an excerpt.

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The latest installment of the Pacific Symphony’s educational “Music Unwound” series attempted to engage the average listener in the music of the great Austrian symphonist Anton Bruckner. A tall order. Even musicians are split on Bruckner’s music (there are plenty of Bruckner jokes) and talking about it doesn’t seem to help the situation much.

Whenever I’m in the Bruckner conversion mood (not often), I generally like to pour an unsuspecting listener a glass of wine and slap a recording onto the stereo. If you play him, say, the Scherzo of the Ninth Symphony, performed by Carlo Maria Giulini and the Chicago Symphony, at full volume, you don’t need to say much of anything. It’s like getting hit by a bus.

Click here to read the whole thing

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February 25, 2011

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Concerto for Florist

From an actual press release:

“La Jolla, Calif. (February 22, 2011) – La Jolla Symphony and Chorus (LJS&C) stretches the conception of the concerto on March 12-13, 2011 in Mandeville Auditorium on the UCSD campus. Conductor Steven Schick begins the program with Serge Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 for Violin, with the brilliant 16-year-old Hannah Cho as soloist, and concludes the program with the greatest orchestral concerto of them all – Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. In between, a complete surprise: the world premiere of Mark Applebaum’s Concerto for Florist and Orchestra, featuring ornamental horticulturalist James DelPrince as soloist.

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“Composer Mark Applebaum (b. 1967), associate professor of music composition and theory at Stanford University, says the idea behind Concerto for Florist and Orchestra originated in a chance encounter with floral designer James DelPrince on an airplane. As Applebaum describes it, four things happened during that ride, all in the span of about 20 seconds: “I learned that Jim was a florist; I instantaneously had the idea of a concerto for florist; I asked him if he’d ever thought about being a performance florist; and he responded ‘Yes–I’ve always dreamed about being a performance florist.’” Earlier versions of the concerto were written for an ensemble of improvising musicians with James DelPrince simultaneously sculpting magnificent and idiosyncratic floral displays. After performing in the ensemble version as percussionist, Steven Schick proposed to Applebaum that he write an entirely new piece for symphony orchestra. The Concerto for Florist and Orchestra (Thomas Nee Commission) is a three-movement work where the musicians perform a traditionally notated composition, but the soloist is free to improvise his part spontaneously. Soloist DelPrince is associate professor of floral design at Mississippi State University and author of two books on floral design.”

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February 23, 2011

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Philip Glass Festival

Did you know that there’s going to be a Philip Glass Festival in town? I thought not.

The event came together partway through the season, more or less, when Long Beach Opera and the Pacific Symphony realized that both organizations would be performing big Glass works in the same month — “Akhnaten” and “The Passion of Ramakrishna,” respectively. Someone’s mom volunteered to make the curtains, someone’s uncle made a poster and somebody else knew someone who knew a guy that went to high school with Glass and — presto — a festival was born. Glass himself will attend at least some of the events (we hope so at least — he’s scheduled to perform his own piano music in Samueli).

This kind of thing should happen more often of course — musical institutions cooperating with each other, that is.

A quick rundown of the festival events is below (click on Read more):

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February 22, 2011

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Bruckner Idol

Our two local big bands and their music directors will compete in the same space with performances of Bruckner symphonies over the next couple of weeks. Segerstrom Concert Hall (part of the recently rechristened Segerstrom Center for the Arts, formerly the Orange County Performing Arts Center) is the site of the battle.

First, Carl St.Clair and his Pacificers will perform Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony (Feb. 24-26). These concerts are part of the orchestra’s “Music Unwound” series (think “Beyond the Score” or “Keeping Score”), in which listeners are given a multidimensional look into the work. The present program, written and produced by music historian Joseph Horowitz, features a pair of actors, visuals, the Norbertine Fathers of St. Michael’s Abbey singing Gregorian chant (by candlelight) and the Grammy winning organist Paul Jacobs (performing excerpts from the Ninth), in addition to a complete performance of the work by the orchestra.

Then, on March 5, the Los Angeles Philharmonic makes its annual journey Behind the Orange Curtain, this time with Gustavo Dudamel joining them for a performance of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. It will be the first time we’ll hear the maestro in Bruckner. Also on the program are Takemitsu’s Requiem for Strings and Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra.

If that’s not enough late Romantic Germanic collosalism for you, Semyon Bychkov and the Vienna Philharmonic weigh in with Mahler’s Sixth Symphony on March 3. Leave your tapping toes at home.

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February 20, 2011

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